


The Lost and Found Kids

by maekebelieve



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: ASL, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Autism, Autistic Bruce Banner, Child Abuse, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone Needs Therapy, Fluff, Foster Care, Found Family, Group Homes, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Bruce Banner, Kid Clint Barton, Kid Fic, Kid Natasha Romanov, Kid Tony Stark, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Mute Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Parent Bucky Barnes, Parent Steve Rogers, Past Rape/Non-con, Scars, Self-Harm, Sign Language, Stimming, Stucky - Freeform, foster home au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24067129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maekebelieve/pseuds/maekebelieve
Summary: 'Why help me out? Nobody’s ever really done that before.''How come?'Natasha looked up at him now, and Clint could finally see how tired she was. 'Bad things happen around me, and I’ve never found anyone willing to give me a second chance.''I will. I’m making a different call.' Clint offered her his hand. Natasha stared at him for a moment- blank and expressionless- before taking a deep breath and allowing him to help her down from the top bunk.Once she had both feet on the ground, Clint pulled her into a hug. She stiffened at first, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let him take most of her weight.'You are worth a thousand second chances, Tasha. I’m making a different call.'Natasha Romanoff has been many things- used, abandoned, beat up. She is all of those things when she's placed in a Brooklyn group home for the 'delinquent and difficult to place.' Clint Barton is an outcast- abandoned by his older brother and the only Deaf kid in his most recent placement. This is the story of how the two of them learn to escape the past and find not only each other, but family, in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 51
Kudos: 226





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my foster home AU! The ages for the kids in the group home are- 
> 
> Clint- 10  
> Natasha- 8 
> 
> Pietro- 6  
> Wanda- 6
> 
> Ian- 8  
> Jasper- 7  
> Daniel- 9  
> Grant- 12  
> Mike- 13  
> Alexander- 14
> 
> Kara- 9  
> Victoria- 11
> 
> Also, just to clarify- Clint and Natasha communicate using American Sign Language. Clint is Deaf, and Natasha has selective mutism stemming from trauma. All dialogue written in italics is being signed, and anything in "double quotation marks" is being spoken. I decided not to use ASL gloss just for the sake of readability, since ASL and English grammar are completely different from one another, but I still want to make it clear that Natasha and Clint are signing, not speaking.

Ever since Iowa, Clint had learned to keep his distance from flashing blue and red lights. He couldn’t hear the siren, of course, but those lights were more than enough to warn him that trouble was headed his way. So when he got off the school bus that afternoon and saw a squad car pulled up to the curb in front of the group home, he ducked into the corner bus shelter instead of waiting for the ‘walk’ signal at the intersection. He waved the rest of the kids on and hoped none of them would rat him out just yet. His social worker was standing outside on the sidewalk, talking to a patrol officer, so Clint doubted he’d notice his absence just yet. 

Maybe they’d found Barney. 

Maybe they’d found out what had really happened in Iowa. 

Maybe this would be Clint’s last day in New York.

Anxiety knotted in his stomach, and he’d started to sweat underneath his hoodie, despite the fact that it was November and the weatherman had forecasted at least a 30% chance of ‘frozen mix’ for a week straight. 

He wished real life came with captions. He was too far away to even begin to make out what his social worker and the officer were talking about, and besides, if you asked him, lipreading was a lot like long division- useful in theory, but extremely hard to actually use. 

Then the cop opened the patrol car’s backseat door and hauled out a young girl who couldn’t have been any older than eight or nine. She was not handcuffed, but rather, ziptied- Clint doubted the NYPD had a pair of handcuffs small enough for this girl. 

She had flaming red curls, and ziptied hands that clutched tight at the straps of a backpack still looped around her shoulders. The left side of her face was all raw from brush burn and her bottom lip was split open and bloody. She was a concerning number of shades of red and black and blue but her face itself was still this completely unreadable mask, jaw set hard and expression blank. 

Clint’s social worker, John Garrett, laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder and continued talking over her. Even from his spot across the street, Clint could see her flinch minutely at the contact. Garrett must have noticed, too, because his meaty grip tightened ever so slightly around her shoulder. The officer said something else, and then Garrett turned around and steered the girl into the building by her upper arm. 

The rest of the kids filed in after them, and Clint dashed across the street to catch the door with his foot and slip inside the entryway. He wasn’t in the mood to get locked out for the second time this week. 

Clint kicked off his shoes and shoved in a cubby in the mudroom, then padded past the living room, where the rest of the elementary-aged kids were dumping their backpacks. Garrett’s office was behind the common room, next to the stairwell. Clint crept up onto the bench underneath the principal’s-style office window that looked out into the hallway and peered through the blinds. 

Garrett and the police officer were still talking, only this time _to_ the girl as opposed to over top of her. They seemed to take turns firing questions at her, the officer from her left and Garrett from her right. The conversation was far too chaotic for Clint to follow, and that was _without_ words.

The girl didn’t say anything, just stared at her grimy sneakers through a curtain of messy curls. Clint would have said they looked damp and frizzy from sweat if it wasn’t barely 30 degrees outside. 

In all the time Clint had known John Garrett, he’d never been a patient man. He rushed through every conversation he had and was always stampeding from one place to another with a stack of files tucked under one arm.

Garrett bent at the waist so he was eye level with the girl and barked out another stream of questions. The redhead flinched away from him and brought her ziptied hands up to chest level before making a motion that nobody else in the room recognized as sign language- _stop._

Clint barrelled through the door, not even bothering to knock. Garrett spun around, face red and bulgey with veins. 

_Her hands!_ Clint signed desperately. _She can’t talk to you without her hands!_

The officer stood at attention now, left hand on the Taser in his utility belt and right reaching for the radio strapped over his shoulder. 

_No, no, stop!_ Clint threw his hands up and shot a desperate look at the girl, then the officer, then finally Garrett, who signed the only phrase in ASL he’d ever bothered to learn for the boy- _Use your words._

Clint rolled his eyes and gestured for a piece of paper and a pen. The officer seemed to relax, then, and passed him a legal pad off Garrett’s desk. 

‘She needs her hands to talk to you’ _,_ Clint wrote, then looked over Garrett’s shoulder to the girl, who’d pressed herself against the desk but had steeled her face back into that terrifyingly neutral expression. _Are you Deaf?_ he asked her. She shook her head. _Do you speak?_ he asked. She shook her head again. 

Clint looked over at the officer and signed _cut_ , then pointed at the girl in front of him. The guy seemed to understand, because he pulled a utility knife off of his belt and gently cut the binds off of her hands. 

_I’m Clint. What’s your name?_ he asked, trying to steer her attention away from the other two men in the room looming over her. 

She just looked at him for a moment, then at the notebook Garrett was crushing absentmindedly in one hand, then back at Clint before rapidly fingerspelling, _Natasha._

Clint could see Garrett huffing and puffing and mumbling something under his breath, probably something along the lines of ‘What is it with you kids and the hands?’ Clint gave Natasha a small smile and she nodded back in solidarity. 

Garrett thrust the notebook back at Clint with a new message scrawled at the bottom of the page- ‘If you like her so much then you get to be responsible for her. Don’t screw up.’

Garrett stepped aside and jerked his thumb over his shoulder- their permission to leave. Clint motioned for Natasha to follow him and the two slipped out into the hallway, which was blessedly free of social workers and cops. 

_I wish I could say he’s not always like that, but he kinda is._ Clint shrugged. 

Natasha nodded again. She was a little thing- a whole head shorter than Clint although they probably weren’t that far apart in age. The fact that she was malnourished probably didn’t help- sunken-in cheekbones and sallow bags under her eyes so deep it was hard to tell them apart from the bruises on the rest of her face. She was wearing ripped jeans and a black hoodie that dwarfed her little frame. And of course, the backpack she clung so desperately to- a muddy, dirty pink with what were probably another girl’s initials embroidered on the front pocket. 

_Come on- I’ll show you around._ Clint led Natasha around the building, giving a tour similar to the one he’d been given only a month ago by some kid named Arnim, who’d gotten himself arrested last week, and was now in juvenile hall. 

The main floor was pretty simple. Mudroom off the entryway. Common room on the left. Nurse’s office and ‘quiet room’ in the front of the building. Dining room and kitchen behind that. 

As they went along, Clint fired off the most important rules- kitchen is off limits except at meal times, curfew is 8 pm, you must ask permission before leaving the building. Rules they’d all heard at every group or foster home they’d ever been in. He then took her up the creaking stairwell that overlooked Garrett’s office. 

Clint sat down on the top step and looked up at her. _Look,_ he signed, trying to keep his movements small so as not to startle her, _I don’t know who or what brought you here, and I’m not going to pretend like this place is a scene out of_ Full House, _but I can promise that I won’t hurt you. Okay?_

She seemed to process this for a minute, just looking straight at him before finally exhaling and signing- _Thank you for what you did back there._ She gestured back down the stairs at the social workers’ offices. 

_A lot of people don’t realize that you can make just as much noise with your hands as you can with your mouth._

The corner of Natasha’s mouth twitched upward a little. She nodded once more. 

Clint jumped back up to his feet and began walking down the long upstairs hallway. _Laundry room on the right, storage on the left,_ he said. _Boys’ rooms are on the left, girls’ on the right. There are two rooms for each, but they’re connected in the middle by the bathroom. All the boys’ beds are full right now, but there are only three girls- four now, counting you- so there’s only one of the girls’ rooms being used._

Clint pushed open the door to the girls’ room. It was simple, and relatively bare- like most group homes, and painted an ugly shade of light pink that was not at all complimented by the grey linoleum. A blue patterned area rug covered the middle of the floor, supposedly donated by a girl who’d aged out of the system about six months ago. Clint only knew her name was Bobbi because she’d been Kara’s best frenemy, and she never shut up about her. 

The room had two twin beds against one wall and a set of bunk beds shoved in the opposite corner. _The top bunk’s free_ , Clint said. _Wanda’s the youngest- she sleeps on the bottom. The top drawer of this side table is yours if you want to set your backpack down._

At this Natasha’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and she returned her hands to their death grip on the thin straps, likely worn from years of that same motion. 

_Okay, that’s fine. You don’t have to. Do you have any sets of clothes in there?_

Natasha just looked at him for a second before signing _no._

_Okay. Well, there’s a storage closet at the end of the hall where we keep donated clothes. I’ll show you._

Clint led her over to the closet, where she pulled down a few pairs of jeans, a long sleeved T-shirt or two, and a hoodie that actually looked like it might fit her, watching over her shoulder the whole time. On their way back to the girls’ room, Clint snagged a set of sheets and a pillowcase, assuming that whatever it was she had in that backpack, it wasn’t bed linens. He wasn’t actually sure if he was allowed to take stuff like this, but he was kind of beyond the point of caring. 

He’d crawled up onto the top bunk in the girls’ room, helping Natasha wrestle a fitted sheet onto the mattress, bent over to avoid scraping his head on the ceiling. They’d finally managed to snap the thing into place when Garrett walked in, holding a clear plastic storage bin. 

He handed the bin to Natasha, likely explaining that she was allowed to keep her personal belongings in that bin, stored away in the girls’ closet. Any kid who’d even been in a group home before knew better than to keep anything important in a communal area like that. On your person was always your safest bet. 

Garrett then gestured for Natasha’s backpack. She took a step backwards, only she didn’t have far to go before backing herself up against the radiator. Garrett rolled his eyes and snatched it out of her arms, ripping open the main pocket so quickly that a keychain popped off the zipper and rolled underneath the bed. 

Natasha lunged at him, though her tiny little frame had hardly any effect on all six feet of their social worker. All he had to do was fling an arm in her general direction, and the backhand flung her onto the bottom bunk. Clint roared, and though the angle was awkward, he managed to nail Garrett in the eye with a solid right hook from his spot on the top bunk. 

Contents of the bag forgotten, Garrett dumped the backpack on the floor, reached up, and dragged Clint over the side of the bed rail and down onto the floor. The weight of him pressed Clint’s chest into the tile floor, ribs smashed at an angle he knew would leave bruises. With his head turned to the side, he could see Natasha clutching at her face, tears leaving streak marks down her cheeks. When Clint stopped struggling and kicking, Garrett pushed off of him and scratched a note onto the legal pad he’d shoved in his back pocket. 

‘Way to live up to your classification there, Barton. Keep that up and you’ll earn a trip to the quiet room.’ 

Garrett was referring to the classification listed at the top of every foster kids’ disciplinary file. Clint’s (as did many of the other kids’) read- ‘delinquent and difficult to place.’ And also to the quiet room- the padded room at the front of the building where ‘difficult’ individuals were placed to ‘think about their actions,’ which really meant to kick and scream and punch the padded walls until they were too tired to be delinquent anymore. Clint hadn’t been in there yet, but he’d seen a few kids come out, and they’d always left with more bruises than when they’d entered. 

Garrett yelled one final thing over his shoulder before passing Clint one more note and stalking out of the room. Clint scowled and crumpled it up without even reading it; it couldn’t possibly say anything important. He gingerly hoisted himself up off the floor. _What did he say?_ he asked Natasha. 

_He told me I should try English next time._

_He’s an idiot. Ignore him._

_He’s the idiot in charge of my life for now._

_Unfortunately._ Clint sat on the bottom bunk a few feet away from Natasha, holding a hand to his ribs. 

_Are you okay?_

_I’ll be fine._ He would be. It wouldn’t be the worst injury he’d ever sustained, not by far. _Can I see?_ He gestured to Natasha’s face. He was far more worried about the fact that her eyes were still a little teary than the fact that she’d taken a hit to the head. This was the first time he’d seen her mask slip, even a little bit. 

The girl nodded and let her hand fall away from her face. Her cheek bloomed red and angry, already tinged the palest shade of blue around the edges. Her whole face was a mess, really- one side scabbed with a nasty brush burn, a split lip, and now the bruise erupting across her cheek and down the edge of her jaw. 

_I’m sorry,_ Clint signed. He walked into the girls’ bathroom, nicked a washcloth off the shelf above the toilet, ran it under the cold tap, and then offered it to Natasha. He would help, but he could tell from the flinching and the backing up and the way she curled her shoulders inwards that she’d had some bad experiences, and didn’t like people being close to her. 

Clint could understand that. He kept a pretty wide personal bubble himself for reasons that gave him nightmares when he closed his eyes at night. 

Natasha accepted the washcloth and began dabbing the blood and scabs and grime away from her face. Clint turned to the scattered contents of her backpack, strewn across the imitation oriental rug. There wasn’t much- a small red leather book, a few photographs, a box of crayons, and a picture book written in an alphabet Clint didn’t recognize. 

He gently picked up each item and placed them back in Natasha’s bag, but not before holding up the book and asking, _What language is this written in?_

_Russian._

_You know Russian?_

_I was born in Russia._

_Oh. How’d you end up here?_

Natasha looked down at her lap, lips set into a thin line- body language that told Clint to leave well enough alone for now. So he did, and handed her back the bag. He could tell she was starting to drift a little. Getting lost in your head was never fun, not when you had the kinds of memories most foster kids had. 

_You, uh, wanna see the guys’ rooms before it’s time for dinner?_

_Okay._

The boys’ bedrooms in the group home were packed to capacity- eight boys crammed into a space the size of your average, nuclear family basement, then divided in half with a folding privacy screen. Four twin beds in the older kids’ room, two single beds and a bunk set for the younger ones. A closet against one wall, door to the shared bathroom on the other. 

Clint had a bed with the older boys, shoved in between Grant and Mike. When he entered the room with Natasha, Grant was the only boy in there. His biological sister, Kara, was perched next to him on top of his quilt, a textbook spread open on her lap. 

Clint pulled a notebook out of his drawer in the bedside table he shared with Mike and flipped to a clean page. 

‘Where’s everyone else?’ he wrote. Some of the younger kids had learned some basic signs when Clint first moved in. Most of the older kids, though, couldn’t be bothered. Grant was a tank engine of a 12 year-old, meaty and muscley and mean. 

Grant shrugged, and chicken-scratched something on the paper before sliding it back. ‘Probably downstairs doing homework or screwing around.’ 

‘This is Natasha.’ He fingerspelled her name, even though neither Grant nor his sister had any clue what fingerspelling was. Mostly he just wanted Natasha to know what he was talking about. 

Grant rolled his eyes and Kara gave her a mock wave from behind the notebook she didn’t seem to be writing anything down in. 

Grant wrote one final note. ‘Looks like you finally found another foster freak just like you. Shame neither one of you will get to hang around very long.’ 

People had been telling Clint things like that since his parents died and he ran away with his older brother, Barney- he’d never amount to anything, he’d end up in jail, he’d end up dead in a ditch somewhere. 

Clint was proud to say that so far, he was neither dead, nor in jail. 

He snatched the notebook back and turned his back on Grant and his sister. Grant was so protective of her, and the two of them were an absolute menace when they were together; it hadn’t taken Clint long to figure out that when it came to those two, staying away was pretty much always his best call. 

He turned back to Natasha, who’d hung near the edges of the room, closest to the door. Her gaze kept flashing between Clint and the Ward siblings in the corner, almost like she was afraid to take her eyes off them. 

_There’s not much in here, but there’s a few toys and an old TV set downstairs. I think Garrett just uses it to pacify us and get us to shut up, but hey, there’s a channel or two with cartoons on it. We can head down if you want._

Natasha didn’t even get a chance to answer when she, Kara, and Grant all picked their heads up. _Someone called for dinner,_ she signed to Clint. 

_Okay, come on._ Clint stuck his notebook in his pocket and followed Kara and Grant out of the guys’ room. _You can’t have your bag at the table._

Natasha must have figured out that this was a pretty hard and fast rule, because she didn’t even try to fight him- just walked back into the girls’ room and wedged the bag firmly in the space between the wall and the corner of her top bunk. 

Clint led her downstairs and into the dining room, which basically looked like a school cafeteria in miniature- linoleum, obnoxious overhead lights, one long table down the center of the room, and a walk-up window that peeked into the kitchen behind. 

A social worker volunteer served them, the same one who would sleep in the night shift monitor’s bedroom at the end of the hall that night. To ‘supervise’ them. 

That night’s dinner was a small slice of meatloaf, some lumpy boxed mashed potatoes, and what appeared to be a few different canned vegetables, all dumped into a bowl and mixed together. Grant hogged the little butter and ketchup packets- the only things that made most of their meals palatable. 

Including them, there were a dozen kids sitting down for dinner. Clint fingerspelled all their names to Natasha- the older guys-Grant, Mike, and Alexander, the younger boys- Ian, Jasper, and Daniel, the girls- Kara and Victoria, and of course the twins- Wanda and Pietro. There was also a place at the head of the table, for Garrett, but he hardly ever used it. The other social workers, volunteers, and support staff usually ate huddled together in the kitchen, pretending the kids didn’t know who they were talking about. 

The oldest, Alexander, took the mashed potato bowl hostage, passing it to Kara and Grant before letting the rest of the kids bicker over it. Clint finally snagged the bowl from Jasper and dished a helping onto his plate, then Natasha’s. He glanced down at the far end of the table, where the twins usually huddled on the same bench seat. 

_You guys want potatoes?_ he signed. Wanda and Pietro had asked him to teach them some signs, and at six years old, were never prouder than when they understood something he’d said to them. 

_Yes!_ Pietro made grabby hands at the bowl and Clint got up to hand it to him so it wouldn’t get intercepted on its way down the table. When he returned to his seat, he noticed Natasha hadn’t even picked up her fork yet. 

_It’s alright. Go ahead. We don’t say grace or anything._ He nodded at her. Her eyes flicked up at him, down the table, and then back down to her plate, where she finally picked up her fork and began shoveling meatloaf in her mouth. He wondered when she’d last eaten- running from the police didn’t often leave time for snacks. 

After dinner, Victoria and Ian took their turns cleaning up and doing the dishes. Natasha slipped back upstairs, completely ignoring the rest of the kids piling on top of one another in the common room to watch TV or play a board game before bed. Clint found her sitting on the edge of her bunk, legs dangling over the edge. 

_Do I have to go to school tomorrow?_ she asked. 

Clint nodded. _What grade are you in?_

_I don’t know._

_How old are you?_

_Eight._

_When was the last time you went to school?_

She shrugged her shoulders, looking everywhere but at Clint’s face. _A few months ago. In the last group home I was at, they told me I should be in third grade but put me in second because English isn’t my first language._

_I’m in fourth grade, so we’ll be in the same school. Don’t worry; I’ll help you out._

_Why?_

_Why what?_

_Why help me out? Nobody’s ever really done that before._

_How come?_

Natasha looked up at him now, and Clint could finally see how tired she was. _Bad things happen around me, and I’ve never found anyone willing to give me a second chance._

 _I will. I’m making a different call._ Clint offered her his hand. Natasha stared at him for a moment- blank and expressionless- before taking a deep breath and allowing him to help her down from the top bunk. 

Once she had both feet on the ground, Clint pulled her into a hug. She stiffened at first, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and let him take most of her weight. 

_You are worth a thousand second chances, Tasha. I’m making a different call._

  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint helps Natasha tackle her first day of school at Midtown Elementary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the support on the first chapter! I really appreciate it and it means a lot to any author to know that even one person enjoyed the words they put out into the world. I plan on updating this story every four days. 
> 
> There are a few content warnings for this chapter, including child abuse, bullying, and mentions of self-harm (nothing graphic). Stay safe, friends!

Clint woke up the next morning to Garrett flicking the bedroom lights on and off at 5:30. The rest of the boys stumbled out of bed, pulling on jeans and sneakers and elbowing one another on their way to the bathroom. 

It hadn’t taken Clint long to learn that it was best to just take his sweet time getting dressed and let them fight over counter space while he rolled around in bed and woke up. He slipped into the bathroom once most of the guys had already pounded down the stairs for breakfast. 

The only other kid in the bathroom was Pietro, struggling to reach something at the top of the medicine cabinet. 

_Here, little dude._ Clint reached over the boy’s shoulder and grabbed the cheap bubblegum toothpaste from the top shelf. 

_Thank you,_ the boy signed back, mouth already foamy and pink. He rinsed and spit, then turned back to Clint, platinum hair still mussed from sleep. _That girl who got here yesterday, do you know her?_

_No. She just seemed like she needed someone to care about her a little bit. We all need someone like that._

Pietro nodded and wiped the corner of his mouth on a towel. 

_Go downstairs for breakfast, bud. I’ll be down in a minute._

Clint pulled on the same hoodie he’d worn yesterday and crossed the hall into the girls’ room, knocking lightly on the doorframe so as not to scare Natasha. She was dressed in clothes from the donation closet, and the bags under her eyes looked a little less like bruises today. 

_Hey,_ he signed. 

She was perched on the edge of her bunk again, looking unsure. 

_We gotta go downstairs and get breakfast if you want something to eat before the bus comes._

_Don’t want to._

_Even if you don’t eat, you have to come downstairs, anyway. Come on._ Natasha jumped down from her bunk, landing on the rug in front of him with her backpack already slung around her shoulders. Clint offered her his hand, and she hesitated for a moment before taking it and giving it a tiny squeeze. 

Whereas dinner in the group home was a bit more mellow, breakfast was absolute chaos- volunteer social workers trying to track down kids to dish out meds and vitamins, kids running from room to room collecting homework and belongings, the older boys pushing everyone out of the way for plates of lukewarm eggs and stale toast. 

One poor volunteer named Sharon was hunched over the dining table, trying to get Grant to take his medicine cup full of pills. Another was wrestling with eight year-old Ian in the corner, who’d decided on this particular morning that he felt like taking a swing at anybody that came within arm’s reach. 

Natasha hung back at the edge of the room, little hand pulling on Clint’s shoulder. Fourteen year-old Alexander came sauntering out of the dining room, plate of ketchup-egg-mess balanced on one open palm. He said something to Natasha, gave her a sickeningly sweet smile, and then gave Clint a lazy _hi, idiot-_ the only two words in sign he’d bothered to learn. He knew the kid was trying to be a jerk, but it made Clint laugh a little every time. 

Ian darted out of the dining room, another volunteer on his heels as he wheeled around the corner in socked feet. On his way past, he shoved Clint and Natasha the side so he could barrel through into the hallway. Natasha flinched and pressed herself into the wall, trying not to breathe heavy and fast. 

Clint squeezed her hand again. _It’s okay. Mornings are chaos- the younger kids like to cause a ruckus just because they can. You want something to eat?_

The girl had blanched white, which only made the brush burn on the side of her face look even more gnarly. 

Right when she looked like she might nod, Grant stood up so fast he pushed over his chair and launched himself at Sharon, sending the pill cup flying. Garrett came storming in and Natasha slipped out of Clint’s grasp. He sighed, and pocketed a granola bar for each of them, and followed her into the empty common room. 

Anyone looking in at the situation might think she was overreacting, that she was being dramatic, like this was some pathetic cry for attention. In all reality, it was anything but. The girl was trying to disappear, to wallflower her way out of any loud or scary or violent situation. And unfortunately, many situations in group homes were loud and scary and sometimes violent, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever or wherever she’d come from had been much, much worse. 

Natasha was sitting on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest, trying to pretend like she wasn’t seconds away from a panic attack. Clint started to get nervous when her scuffed, bruised hands started pulling at her shirt and clawing at her chest. 

_I was born in Iowa._ Clint pulled a chair out from one of the desks pushed against the window where some of the kids did homework after school. He sat down, pulled one of the granola bars out of his jeans pocket, and started munching on it absentmindedly; if he didn’t eat every few hours, he got nauseous and shaky. Skipping breakfast was not an option. _My parents died when I was six. My older brother, Barney, and I ran away to the circus to avoid being taken by CPS. We didn’t have any relatives to take us in or nothing._

Natasha was watching him intently, trying to pull breaths into her chest, one hand itching at her forearm underneath her hoodie sleeve. 

_As it turned out, the circus wasn’t such a great place to be. We found out the guys in charge were organized crime- mafia. Barney and I had to keep running with them once the cops caught wind of them. That’s how I ended up in New York._

Natasha didn’t say anything yet, but Clint felt the knot in his own chest loosen when he saw that she was breathing easier. 

_So I know what it’s like to have bad memories, too- you don’t have to sit alone with them._

Natasha picked her head up. _What happened to Barney?_

Clint just looked at her for a second. It had been so long since he’d talked about him, so long since anyone had even asked about him. Garrett didn’t even know he had a brother. 

Natasha tried again- _Your brother, where is he now?_

 _No idea._ Clint would have kept going (god knows there were so many more chapters to that story), but Victoria stuck her head in the doorway, one arm in her coat. The other quickly fingerspelled _bus_ , and she gave Natasha and Clint the universal ‘hurry up’ signal. 

Clint stood up, pushed his chair in, and rushed to grab his jacket from the hall closet. He could feel Natasha trailing behind him on his way there and back up to the mudroom to grab his shoes and backpack. Grant must have eventually taken his meds, because he was standing by the front door, sulking, and Sharon was in the dining room cleaning up breakfast. Ian was nowhere to be found- probably in the quiet room being anything but quiet. 

Garrett passed Natasha a file folder full of papers as the kids filed past him and down the front steps, then watched them from the porch as they all shuffled onto the school bus. 

They get off the bus a half hour later at Midtown Elementary- a two-story brick building tucked onto a tiny campus across the street from the middle school. Clint led Natasha off the bus, and was immediately greeted by a tall, thin woman with short brown hair and sharp eyes. 

_Who’s that?_ Natasha asked him. 

_Ms. Hill, my interpreter._ He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Maria wasn’t ‘eavesdropping.’ _She’s also my chaperone, since I’m a ‘flight risk.’_

_Oh. Am I a flight risk?_

_I don’t think so. They usually give you a chance or two before assigning you a babysitter._

Natasha nodded, anxiously fiddling with the folder she still held tight in her hands. She’d already managed to rip the front cover on the bus ride to school. 

Clint gently took one of her hands into his own and squeezed. _Come on, you need to take those papers to the main office so they can tell you where your classroom is. I’ll show you._

He led her through the throng of students pushing to get into the main doors, then immediately hung a right into the main office, where the secretary, Miss Carter, greeted him with a smile. 

_Good morning, Clint!_ she signed slowly. _Who’s this with you?_

_This is Natasha. She’s new, and I need to give her enrollment papers to Principal Rhodes so I can take her to her classroom._

_He’s in his office. Go ahead._ Miss Carter offered them a warm smile, then turned back to the computer screen in front of her and the stack of pink tardy slips at her elbow. 

Clint led Natasha around the corner and down a short hallway to Principal Rodhes’ office. Ms. Hill followed them into the office and shut the door behind her, which made Natasha stand on edge. She set the papers on the man’s massive oak desk and stood behind Clint’s chair, stubbornly refusing to sit down. 

_Principal Rhodes- this is Natasha. She’s new._

_I can see that. How are you Miss Romanoff?_ Ms. Hill interpreted the conversation for Clint, and relayed Natasha’s answers back to the principal, who waited patiently with a warm smile on his face. 

_Fine._

_Is your social worker John Garrett, as well?_

She nodded. 

_He’s a good man._ Clint and Natasha both stiffened, but neither made a comment to correct the man. Nobody ever believed the kid in these situations, anyway. 

_Okay, so you’ll be in room #271 with Ms. May. I think you’ll like her. She’ll be your ESL teacher, as well. I will work on finding an interpreter for you today._ Principal Rhodes then turned and directed his next question at Clint. _Do you mind showing Miss Romanoff to her classroom? I can write you a late pass just in case you need it, though I’m sure Mr. Fitz won’t mind._

Clint nodded. 

_Excellent. Thank you very much. Now, Miss Romanoff, you know where to find my office if you need anything. Your friend Clint has a chaperone- I’m sure he told you why. I am going to assume right now that the same will not be necessary for you. Let’s keep it that way, okay?_

_Okay._

_Good. Now get to class, you two, and have a nice day. You as well, Ms. Hill._

Clint led Natasha through the ground floor of the elementary school, where the younger kids had their classes. They stopped outside of room 271, and Natasha barrelled into the hug he offered her, burying her face in his sweatshirt. 

_You’re gonna be just fine, Tasha._

_But nobody will know what I’m trying to say and what if I get in trouble? People get mad when I don’t talk._

Clint could practically see the gears spiralling in her head. _Hey, hey, stop. Here._ He slung his backpack off of his shoulder and fished around in the front pocket before pulling out a spare spiral-bound notebook and a pen. _You can use this if you need to, okay? I’ll meet you right here after school, and we’ll get on the bus together._

Natasha nodded and tugged the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over the palms of her hands. _Thank you._

_You got it. I’ll see you later, okay?_

Room 271 was one of the school’s six second-grade classrooms, tucked up in the northwest wing. Miss May was a kind but stern woman, with a neutral expression that Natasha realized was probably quite similar to her own. She waited patiently while Natasha shuffled through the papers Principal Rhodes had told her to give to her teacher. 

“Okay, Natasha- I’m going to put you back there at table 5, okay? You can put your stuff away in any empty cubby.” 

Natasha ignored that last set of instructions and walked to the ‘table’ in the back corner- which was really just four desks pushed together. Only two of the ones at table 5 were occupied- one by a curly-haired kid whose name tag read ‘Tony’ and the other by a kid Natasha recognized from the group home- Jasper. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath as she sat down. And then, a little louder, “Hey, look, it’s another one of the silent freaks. What happened to your friend? He finally decide he’s had enough of you?” 

“Mr. Sitwell, I think maybe you can find some kinder words than that,” Miss May said over her shoulder as she walked past the group on her way to the supply cupboard in the back of the room. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he grumbled. 

“I’m Tony,” the other boy said, bouncing his legs under the table. Natasha just nodded at him, starting to get a little overwhelmed. There were just so many people in the room, and she was so far away from the door if she needed to leave and she didn’t like it. She pulled her backpack off her shoulders and into her lap, fidgeting with the zipper and running her fingers over the familiar monogram on the front pocket. When that didn’t do enough to relieve her anxiety, she reached under her left sweatshirt sleeve with her right hand and dug her dull fingernails into the scars there. 

“What’s your name?” Tony asked. 

Natasha’s pulse about doubled in her chest, and she was starting to feel a little hot and dizzy. She then remembered the notebook Clint had given her and she flipped open the front cover. He’d doodled an alien in the top margin, and she smiled just a little bit. 

‘Natasha,’ she wrote, and slid it across the table. 

“She doesn’t talk,” Jasper said. 

“How do you know?” Tony asked. 

At this, Jasper finally shut up, probably too embarrassed to talk about where he lived or the situation he was in. 

“You don’t talk?” Tony asked. 

Natasha shook her head and took the notebook back. When she picked her head back up after writing another note, Tony just looked at her for a second, then signed _Are you Deaf?_

It took her brain a minute to form a coherent answer to this fairly simple yes or no question. _No,_ she finally managed, still a little shocked. _How do you know sign?_

_My little brother has autism and sometimes words are hard for him, so we sign instead. Why do you sign?_

_Words are hard for me, too._ For different reasons, but nevertheless, they were still hard. 

Her day got a little easier, with someone to talk to and help her communicate if Miss May asked her a question. She was still nearly vibrating with anxiety, though, and by the time they got to English, Natasha thought she was going to throw up the half of a granola bar Clint had made her choke down on the bus that morning. 

Miss May passed out language arts worksheets- ‘reading comprehension,’ she’d called them. Now, Natasha had no problems understanding spoken English, but she hadn’t been in school much these past few years since coming to America, and written English still confounded her. Miss May pulled her aside when she noticed Natasha writing down half her answers with Roman letters and the other half in cursive Cyrillic. 

“Principal Rhodes told me Russian is your first language?” 

Natasha fixed her eyes on the tile floor and nodded. 

“Хотите показать мне свое имя на русском языке?” her teacher asked in fluent Russian. 

A spark ignited in Natasha’s chest- one she hadn’t felt for a long time. It had been nearly two years since she’d heard her native language. Three years since she’d come to America, two since her biological mother had gone to prison and she’d been taken by CPS. 

She flipped over her English worksheet and proudly wrote ‘Наташа’ on the back of her paper. 

Miss May smiled at her. “Что за прекрасное имя. This is mine.” Right underneath Natasha’s, she printed her first name in swooping Cyrillic cursive- ‘Мелинды.’

“Do mine! Do mine!” Tony was now leaning over his desk, craning his neck to see Natasha’s paper. She jumped, shielding the paper with her arm even though he wasn’t trying to take it from her, and she wasn’t doing anything she wasn’t supposed to be doing. 

Natasha was frozen for a minute, heart thudding all the way up in her throat the closer Tony got to her. 

“Mr. Stark, in your chair please.” Miss May walked around the table, crouched down next to Tony’s desk, and neatly wrote Тони at the top of his English worksheet, which he’d only bothered to work on a little. Tony beamed, whispered a “thank you,” and got to work scribbling down the rest of the answers. One hand scratched answers onto paper, the other twisted a rubber band in his palm, like he was fueled by a need for constant motion. 

Miss May walked back around to Natasha’s desk. “I do ESL lessons for the second graders on Tuesdays and Thursdays, okay?” 

Natasha nodded her head yes. Miss May gave her a little smile and whispered,“Спасибо.” 

They got home from school a little after 3 that afternoon, and by that point Natasha had a headache. As soon as they got their shoes off and Clint returned his coat to the hall closet, he steered her into the dining room. 

_Normally, we’re not allowed to have snacks,_ he said, placing a bowl of grapes and a peanut butter sandwich between them, _but I get sick if I go too long without eating, and you don’t look so hot yourself. Plus, Sharon likes me._

 _Didn’t eat lunch. Too many people,_ Natasha said, burying her head in her arms. 

Clint tapped her hand- once, twice, gently. _Why didn’t you come find me?_

She shrugged. Her brain was starting to feel all fuzzy and muddled, and the thought of forming coherent answers was becoming a little too overwhelming. 

_Eat. You’ll feel a little better. Trust me._

She’d just started to pick at half of the peanut butter sandwich when the middle school kids got back, stomping in through the mudroom and elbowing one another on their way to get a prime spot in front of the TV. 

Grant ducked out of the pack of older kids into the dining room, snuck up behind Clint, and plucked the bowl of grapes out from in front of him. Clint startled, elbow smacking into the plate and vibrating the table a little bit. He spun around, breathing heavy, and Grant just laughed, tossing grapes up into the air and catching them in his mouth. 

“Too easy, Barton. Too easy.” He wandered around the table, and Natasha began taking huge, sticky bites of the peanut butter sandwich, despite the fact that it was not mixing well with the copious amounts of acid in her stomach. She slid the other half back over to Clint and out of Grant’s reach. 

“Oh, you think you’re so clever, don’t ya?” Grant smirked, then leaned over and plucked Natasha’s backpack out of her lap. “There was quite the ruckus over this last night. Why don’t we see what all the fuss was about?” 

The pounding in Natasha’s head immediately intensified in time with her heartbeat. 

_Stop._

She forced herself to never show the fear she felt, because emotions were weakness and strength was the only thing that mattered, because a voice in her head echoed, ‘You are better than this, Natalia.’ 

Be better than this. 

She clenched her shaking fists under the table and willed them still, then looked up as Grant dumped the contents of her bag out onto the table. 

Clint was fuming, face glowing red as he lunged across the table and swiped at the bag, which Grant snatched away just in time to knock Clint off balance. 

“Ooh, what’s this?” Grant snatched the little red book off the table, then flipped open the front cover. It must not have been interesting enough for him, because he flipped through a few of the pages and tossed it back on the table. 

Natasha’s Russian passport fell open on the table right in front of her. 

Grant picked up her box of crayons, holding them up to his ear and rattling the contents before ripping open the cardboard flap and peering inside. 

“So this is what you don’t want anyone else to find,” he sneered. “Is this why you’re so quiet, hmm? Whatcha hiding, little mouse?” 

Clint leaped across the table as Grant wrapped a meaty hand around Natasha’s wrist and started to forcibly roll up her sleeves. She panicked- struggled, kicked, fought like she’d had to so many times before, because maybe if she held out long enough he wouldn’t be able to take whatever it was he wanted from her. 

Clint had no idea what Grant was saying to Natasha, only that one second he was pawing through her things, and the next he was dragging her across the room by her arm. All he saw was red. 

One of the kitchen staff peeked her head into the dining room, saw the three of them, and immediately started hollering for Garrett, who barrelled in seconds later and ripped them apart. It didn’t take much- Clint and Natasha were pretty small, and while Grant was strong and muscular, he was still 12, so Garrett just picked him up, wrenched his arms behind his back, and deposited him in a corner across the room. He shoved Clint back into his chair, peanut butter sandwich long-forgotten. 

“What on Earth is going on in here?” He surveyed the scene, and Natasha shrunk under his gaze- wandering and greedy and so, so angry. His eyes then fell on the overturned backpack, abandoned on the table, and an angry vein popped out on the side of his neck. 

“This again? This goddamned bag!” He pushed Natasha aside and she smacked into the wall, sliding down it until she could curl her knees to her chest and pretend that this wasn’t happening. “I should have confiscated it from you when you got here.” 

Clint caught her eyes across the table, searching. _What’s going on?_

_Garrett’s taking my stuff._

He must have seen Clint move to get up out of his chair because he was in front of him a second later, hands on his shoulders. Clint flinched and leaned back, throwing his hands up, as Garrett bent down to his eye level and screamed “No!” in his face. 

“Tell him to stay put if he knows what’s good for him.” 

_Garrett says stay there. Don’t move._ Then, seeing the frightened look on Clint’s face, added, _please_. He nodded. 

Their social worker crossed back over to her side of the table. “She has contraband, sir!” Grant pointed at the box of crayons, no longer organized by reds and greens and blues. Garrett pocketed her passport without a word and swiped the box of crayons up in one smooth motion. He glanced inside, then crouched down so he was eye level with her. 

“You think this is funny?” He shook the box in front of her face, and she could hear the razor blades and sharpened paper clips rattling around in there next to the crayons. “You think this kind of freakish behavior is acceptable? Because it’s not! Just another one of the reasons why kids like you will never find families.” 

He reached out and ripped up the left sleeve of her hoodie, exposing the rows of scars on her inner arm, neat and orderly from her wrist to the middle of her forearm. 

“Pathetic.” 

Natasha scrambled away from him, frantically pulling down her sleeve and sending a silent prayer out into the universe that Clint hadn’t seen. 

He couldn’t know. 

Nobody could ever know. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint wakes Natasha up from a nightmare, and the two of them sneak out onto the roof to talk when she can't fall back to sleep afterwards. Natasha shares a little bit of her story with Clint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Chapter Three is a bit shorter than the others have been, but I didn't want to add extraneous material onto the end of the chapter just to meet a specific word count. I'm an author at heart, and I wanted to stay true to the story and just end the chapter where it felt natural. 
> 
> In case anyone was wondering, I introduce Steve and Bucky in Chapter Four (which will be posted Wednesday, May 20). Thanks for all your support on this fic so far; it means a lot to me!

Clint did not like being woken up. He didn’t mind Garrett flicking the lights on and off to wake them all up at 5:30 for school, but what he did mind was being shaken awake. That usually ended with limbs flying everywhere and getting tangled in blankets and at least one person with a bloody nose or black eye. 

Someone laid a gentle hand on his leg in the middle of the night. He still startled awake, but there was no kicking or accidental punches thrown, which was a relief.

Victoria was standing at the foot of the bed, Wanda’s silhouette clutching the doorframe in the yellow light that streamed into the boys’ room from the hallway.

_ What’s wrong?  _ he asked, pushing himself up on both arms. 

_ Natasha... _ He could practically see her searching her brain for the right sign.  _...scared. Bad dream.  _

_ Anyone else wake up?  _

_ Not yet.  _

_ Good. I’m coming.  _

Clint pulled a sweatshirt on and slid out of bed. Victoria grabbed Wanda’s hand and led Clint into the girls’ room. Kara was an unmoving lump under the covers, a fact which allowed Clint to breathe a little easier. The last thing this situation needed was the Ward siblings. 

Victoria let Wanda curl up on her bed, and tucked the comforter in around her. Suddenly, she napped her attention back to Clint and jerked her head up at the top bunk-  _ Wake her up, now.  _

Clint climbed the first two rungs of the ladder and peeked over top of the mattress. 

Natasha was thrashing around in bed, blankets tangled and sweaty. He turned back around to look at Victoria. 

_ What’s she yelling about?  _

_ I have no idea. She’s just...screaming.  _

When Clint had nightmares, he hated being touched. It made a situation that was already overwhelming even more difficult to deal with. He didn’t want to do that to Natasha, but he was genuinely worried that with as much as she was tossing and turning, she was going to hurt herself. 

Plus being stuck in your head like that is its own special kind of torture. 

He reached out and laid a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. At first she didn’t respond, just kept fighting whatever demons lived in her memories, but as soon as he squeezed and shook her shoulder ever so slightly, she bolted upright, smacked her head off the ceiling, and scrambled into the far corner of her bunk, breathing hard. 

Clint held his hands up and leaned back.  _ I’m sorry,  _ he signed.  _ I needed to wake you up. You were having a nightmare.  _

She didn’t respond, just stared right through him with huge, wide eyes. She was pretty close to hyperventilating, sleep shirt stuck to her chest with sweat. 

_ You’re safe, I promise.  _

He stood on the ladder for another few minutes, just sitting with her.  _ I have nightmares, too, you know. I know how hard it is to get those kinds of memories to stay in the past.  _

_ Are you gonna tell on me?  _ she finally asked with shaky hands. 

Clint swallowed hard and tried not to cry. He knew what that desperate fear felt like- that dreaded feeling of ‘I am not safe’ that settled around in your stomach after years of people treating you like you deserved everything that came your way.

_ Can I come up?  _ Clint asked. 

Natasha paused, wiped her face on a corner of her sheets, and then nodded. Clint hauled himself the rest of the way up the ladder, ducking his head as he shuffled across to the corner of the bed. He settled against the wall, but still far enough away from her so that she wouldn’t feel trapped. He held an arm out, and it only took Natasha a few moments of looking uncertain before she fell against him and wrapped her arms around his stomach. 

Natasha just laid there and cried into his shirt for a few minutes, tears and snot running all over Clint’s hoodie. She was still shaking a little, and didn’t complain when Clint reached around her to pull the comforter up over his lap and around her shoulders. 

He was a little overwhelmed himself; he hadn’t had this much physical contact with another person in a long time. It felt so good to sit with another human being who didn’t want to hurt him and just... _ be  _ next to them. 

Clint tapped Natasha’s arm. She didn’t move from her spot tucked into his chest, but she didn’t flinch away from him, so he took it as permission to wrap his left arm around her, rubbing long, slow circles up and down the length of her back. 

She jumped and pushed away from him, hands up in bruised little fists. Clint brought his own hands up, fingers spread, to show her he meant no harm. 

_ Sorry. I should have asked. I don’t want to scare you.  _

Ever. 

Clint offered her his right hand, just let it sit there on top of the sheets. She took it a moment later, still a little shaky. Clint slowly fingerspelled  _ okay  _ into her palm _.  _

You’re okay. 

We’re okay. 

We’ll all be okay someday. 

Okay? 

Natasha picked her head up, brushed sweaty curls out of her face, and glanced up at him with red, swollen eyes.  _ Okay _ , she signed back. 

Clint huffed out a little laugh and wrapped her back up in a hug. 

Okay. 

_ I don’t want to go back to sleep,  _ she’d said. 

So now they were out on the fire escape, scurrying up the ladder onto the roof. This was where Clint came when he couldn’t sleep- tucked in a corner behind the building’s air conditioning unit, next to the vent that blew warm laundry air out into Brooklyn smog. 

Clint sat to one side of the vent, then opened the comforter wrapped around his shoulders in invitation. Clint waited, and was about to just give Natasha the whole thing and let her sit wherever she felt comfortable when she took a breath and relented, tucking herself in next to him. Clint wrapped the blanket loosely around her and felt his heart warm a little when she nestled (ever so slightly) into his side. 

_ I have something for you,  _ Clint signed once they’d gotten settled. He pulled the little red book out of his hoodie pocket and passed it over to Natasha. 

Her eyes widened, and she ran her fingers over the worn cover- the gold ink had almost been rubbed off of the logo stamped in the center. 

_ How?  _ she asked. 

_ Garrett got a phone call right after dinner and left in a huge hurry. I snuck into his office while everyone else was in the common room watching TV.  _

_ Thank you.  _

He could tell she meant it. Clint wasn’t sure what this little book meant to her, but it must have been important, because it had gotten her slapped in the face two days in a row, and she didn’t even seem to mind. But the curiosity was starting to itch at his insides. 

_ What is it?  _

Next to him, he could feel Natasha fiddling with the sleeve of her shirt and anxiously rubbing her other hand across her opposite arm. 

_ You don’t have to tell-  _ he started, but Natasha shook her head and held up her hand to stop him. She flipped the book sideways, then opened it to the first page and balanced it on her knee so they could both see. 

_ This is who they say I am.  _ Natasha nodded at the book, open in her lap between them. It was a passport- picture in the upper lefthand corner, the rest of the page covered in lines of intricate Cyrillic letters. The little girl in the picture resembled Natasha, only a few years younger, but still with those same fiery curls. 

_ What does it say?  _ Clint asked. 

Natasha sight read for him, running her pointer finger across the letters as she fingerspelled with her other hand.  _ They say I am Natalia Romanova.  _

_ What do you mean? Is that your name in Russian? Who’s ‘they?’ _

_ No. It’s not my name at all. It’s a name my mom made up when we had to run away.  _

Clint glanced up at Natasha’s face, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking out at the horizon- peppered with buildings and skyscrapers and the silhouettes of bridges looming across New York. It was too bright in the city to see many stars, but the moon was brilliant- a perfect crescent sliver hanging in the sky like a picture book illustration. 

_ Who is Natalia Romanova?  _ Clint asked a few moments later. 

_ She is the girl whose mother brought her to America three years ago to save her life. And then made it so much worse.  _

_ Where’s your mom now?  _

_ She should be in prison, but she’s probably dead. Where are your parents?  _

_ Definitely dead.  _

_ I’m sorry.  _

_ Thanks.  _ And then a moment later,  _ Do you have a dad?  _

_ Technically.  _

_ Where is he?  _

_ Russia.  _

They just sat with each other for a little while, watching the night sky and breathing in vent air that smelled faintly of dryer sheets. Natasha had tucked herself into a tiny little ball next to Clint, and it hurt his heart to realize that she’d probably had a lot of practice making herself small. 

_ My brother is out there, somewhere.  _ Clint hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since Natasha had asked about him earlier in the day. Yesterday? It didn’t matter. 

Natasha didn’t say anything, but he knew she was paying attention. 

_ A guy who called himself Trickshot took me under his wing, but carnies aren’t very good at taking care of kids- especially not carnies running from the law. Trickshot turned out not to be a great guy, either. So Barney and I got good at just taking whatever we needed. We were a pretty good team, me and him. I knew it was wrong, but I was six and hungry and nothing else mattered. I got caught and sent to juvie when I was eight, while the circus was performing in New York City. When I got out, CPS took custody of me and Barney was nowhere to be found. _

_ He just left you?  _

_ He was 18 at the time, so if he got caught, he’d be in prison trouble, not juvie trouble.  _

_ But you’re family.  _

_ I think he ran away after that. From the circus. From Trickshot. From everything that happened in Iowa.  _

_ What happened in Iowa?  _

Clint just shook his head. He didn’t want to go there, not now. 

Natasha didn’t push; she just sat next to him, calmly, watching the night sky, until she started to lilt sideways into him. Her head drifted onto his shoulder and Clint tightened the blanket wrapped around them. 

A while later, when Clint was sure she’d fallen asleep, she reached over and tapped his hand.  _ I know what it’s like to miss a sibling.  _

_ What do you mean?  _ he asked. 

_ I have a sister.  _

_ What’s her name?  _

_ Yelena.  _

_ What happened?  _

Natasha shrugged.  _ CPS took us when our mother went to prison. I lost track of Yelena after I ran away from a group home we’d been placed in. We got lucky enough to end up together, and I ruined it. _

_ Why’d you run?  _

_ Same reason all foster kids run.  _ Bad people doing bad things to kids; Clint could practically finish the sentence for her. 

Natasha moved her hands up out of the blanket cocoon to play with her face, fingertips dancing over her healing brush burn.  _ I know what it’s like to miss your other half. You’ll find him someday.  _

_ If he even wants to be found.  _

_ We all do, don’t we?  _

Victoria was waiting up for them when Clint walked Natasha back down the fire escape and helped her crawl through the window in the girls’ room. Wanda was asleep- a lump of blanket curled up on Victoria’s bed. 

_ She okay?  _ Victoria asked as soon as they’d wrestled the window shut. 

Clint nodded, and walked Natasha over to her bunk. 

_ Thank you,  _ she signed. Clint passed her blanket up to her once she’d crawled up the ladder. 

_ Of course.  _ Just as she was about to lay down, he took a step up onto the bottom bunk and popped his head up over the edge of the mattress.  _ You know I mean it when I say we’re in this together, right?  _

Natasha nodded and gave him a small smile. 

_ Sleep well, okay? I’ll leave the door cracked.  _

He jumped back down onto the floor and turned to look at Victoria, who was getting settled in Wanda’s spot on the bottom bunk. 

_ I can’t move Wanda now that she’s asleep in my bed, so I’ll just sleep in hers.  _

Clint nodded and stepped aside so she could duck into bed. 

Victoria caught his hand just as he was about to turn around and walk back to the boys’ room.  _ You two are good for each other, you know that, right? You both deserve someone to watch your back after all this time.  _

_ I just wish we didn’t have to.  _

_ Have to what?  _

_ Watch our backs.  _

Victoria nodded, the hot pink streak in her bangs catching in the glowing light from the hallway.  _ This place,  _ she gestured around them at the walls, _ is like a lost and found. All of us are lost, and only some of us get found. You lost Barney, and I’m sure Natasha has lost people along the way, but I think you two found each other. Hang onto her, alright?  _

Always. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone shows up from Natasha's past- someone who'd told her never, ever to tell. One social worker and a SHIELD translator step in to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, get ready, folks. This chapter is a bit of a beast- it's almost 4,300 words long. (Chapter Five is even longer. I'm not sorry). I've been so excited to post this chapter, ever since the start of this fic. You'll get to meet some new main characters who will become big influences in Clint and Natasha's life. 
> 
> Also, I would like to note that Russian is not my native language. I include some Russian dialogue to make one particular character feel more authentic, but I am by no means fluent, so if there are mistakes, please feel free to correct me and I will make changes! 
> 
> Thank you so much for all the support I've received so far on this fic! It means a lot to know that the words I string together bring other people joy. Happy reading!

Principal Rhodes had kept his word. He’d found an aide for Natasha, who could also interpret and help her communicate with classmates other than Tony. Most of the time she chose not to, but at least now the option was available, and it did a lot to ease the anxiety that sat in the pit of her stomach and kept her from eating lunch most days. Miss Potts was nice and she didn’t try to force Natasha to do things she didn’t want to do, which she appreciated. 

It was a Friday, and Natasha was working on her ESL homework during their free period at the end of the day. She had to practice the Roman alphabet by writing that week’s spelling words in Russian on one side of the paper, and then in English on the other side. 

Miss Potts was up talking to Ms. May at her desk, the two of them huddled around the classroom’s landline. A few minutes later, she walked back to Natasha’s desk and crouched down to talk to her. 

“Natasha, Principal Rhodes asked us to come down to his office.” 

She froze, pencil digging into her paper on the tail of her ‘e’ at the end of ‘because.’ 

“It’s okay, you’re not in trouble. He just wants to talk to you about something, okay?” 

Natasha nodded stiffly, and made sure she had Clint’s notebook in her backpack before grabbing the hall pass and trailing behind Miss Potts down to the main office, where Principal Rhodes was standing next to a tall, harsh-looking man wearing slacks and a camo military parka. 

“моя дочь.” 

My daughter. 

“я вас везде ищу.” 

I’ve been looking for you everywhere. 

“пойти со мной домой.”

Come home with me. 

“моя дочь,” he said again, gaze falling on the backpack Natasha was wearing. She clutched the straps tighter to her chest and took a step back, bumping into Miss Potts. 

“Miss Romanoff,” Principal Rhodes began. “This man claims to be your father. When he couldn’t get in touch with your social worker, he came to see me.” 

Natasha shook her head and pressed closer to Miss Potts’ leg. 

“You’re fine, honey, we’ll get this sorted out,” her aide whispered. 

“Do you still carry your passport like I told you, my girl?” the man asked. “That will help show we’re family.” The man flashed his Russian passport, which mirrored hers exactly save for the picture of the military man in the corner and the name ‘General A. Dreykov’ in bold Cyrillic print. 

He took a step closer to Natasha and held out his hand for her backpack. “Let me see, so we can go home.” When she didn’t respond, the General reached for the strap of her backpack and started to slide it off of her shoulders. 

Natasha screamed and jerked away from him, arms flailing in an attempt to drive him away from her. 

Not again. 

Never again. 

Miss Potts caught her wrist and crouched down to her eye level, effectively making herself a human barricade in between Natasha and Dreykov. 

“Honey, I need you to calm down so we can all figure out what’s going on here. Nobody’s making you do anything right now.” 

Natasha flinched away from the contact- she just wanted out of here, anywhere, as far away from him as she could possibly get because she’d thought that maybe with an ocean in between her and her father she’d be safe and maybe her mother had done one thing right by getting her away from him but she hadn’t even managed that. 

The only thing that distracted her from her panic was the office door banging open. Clint barrelled inside, hair still a little sweaty from recess. The rest of his class filed past the front office and back towards the stairwell that led up to the third and fourth grade classrooms. He tugged Natasha out of Miss Potts’ gentle grip and buried her in a hug. It took her breath away a little bit, but the only thing her brain really registered was ‘safe’ and that was all that mattered. Clint held her snug in his arms as he rocked her slowly back and forth, then pulled them apart and looked her dead in the eye. 

_Are you okay? What’s going on?_

Natasha was shaking a little but refused to look over Clint’s shoulder at the General. _My father is here,_ she signed without showing any emotion at all. Miss Potts was the only other person in the room who would know what she was talking about, and she was now standing across the room whispering with Principal Rhodes. 

Clint’s eyes widened. _Wait, what? I thought he wasn’t even in the country-_

_I’m not safe with him. I can’t tell you what he did, not right now, but I can’t leave here with him._

Dreykov must have lost his patience during their frantic conversation, because he cleared his throat and said, “Теперь нам безопасно возвратиться домой.” 

Natasha’s gaze snapped away from Clint and to the man now perched on the edge of Miss Carter’s desk. Clint jumped a little and tucked Natasha behind him. 

Dreykov switched to English, his accent thick and heavy. “Who is this? He doesn’t matter. We leave now, my girl.” 

Natasha shook her head. 

The General whipped his head over to Principal Rhodes and Miss Potts. “Why will my child not talk to me? The girl is not dumb in the head! Answer me, Natalia!” 

Miss Potts just looked confused, glancing between Natasha and Dreykov with her brows knit together. 

“Теперь нам безопасно возвратиться домой,” Dreykov repeated. It’s safe to go home now. “Let’s go home, daughter.” Then, when Natasha failed to open her mouth, “Answer me, now!” 

Natasha leaned out from behind Clint a little bit and looked straight at the man who called himself her father and signed her response with the blankest expression she could manage. 

“What is she doing with her hands?” Dreykov was practically roaring now, and Natasha shrank away from him on instinct. Miss Potts put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “She uses American Sign Language to communicate, sir. She said ‘No. Never.’” Her aide flashed her a look of pity or sympathy or something Natasha was far too overwhelmed to decode. 

And then all hell broke loose. 

The General was screaming, Clint was signing frantically in an attempt to figure out what was going on, Principal Rhodes was trying desperately to calm everyone down, and Miss Potts was trying to interpret the tumult of screaming and failing miserably. 

“All right! Enough!” Principal Rhodes barked. 

Natasha was in the corner, crying, with her hands over her ears. Clint was standing overtop of her, shaking and looking like a protective mother bear. Dreykov’s face was flushed red in a way that was far too familiar for Natasha’s comfort. Him being here at all was far too much for her comfort. 

She’d be much more comfortable if he were oceans away from her. In prison. 

“Everyone take a breath,” Principal Rhodes said, at a much lower volume. Miss Potts started interpreting again, and Clint sighed in relief. “Miss Romanoff, I was, much like your...uh...Mr. Dreykov here, unable to reach your social worker earlier. I called SHIELD CPS and they are sending whatever social worker they have on call at the moment.” Then a moment later, under his breath, “And a translator. There are far too many languages happening in this room right now.” 

Natasha sucked in a breath and nodded. 

“Okay. Now, Miss Potts is going to take you into a spare meeting room in the guidance office while Mr. Dreykov and I talk for a little bit.” Natasha grabbed Clint’s hand and squeezed, hard. Their principal sighed and rubbed at his temples with one hand. “Well, Mr. Barton, seeing as you’ve already inserted yourself in this situation, you can go, too. I’ll call Mr. Fitz and let him know where you are so he doesn’t think we have a missing student on our hands.” 

Natasha collapsed into a padded spinny chair in the meeting room and let herself take her first deep breath for the first time in fifteen minutes. Clint sat down next to her and pulled her over the armrests separating them to lean on his shoulder. 

Miss Potts took a seat across from them and leaned forward in her chair, elbows on the table. _Natasha, sweetheart, I know that was a lot to handle. Who was that?_ She signed rather than spoke, so Clint could understand as well. 

Natasha shook her head and pulled her knees up to her chest, tucking her feet up on the cushy chair. She scrubbed her hands over her face and then threaded her fingers through her curls and pulled, because maybe that would help regulate all the chaos in her head. 

Clint tapped her hand just as Miss Potts signed, _I know you’re anxious right now but there are much safer ways to handle it, okay? Can you describe to me what’s going on?_

Natasha shook her head into her lap, then signed, _Too much._

Miss Potts sighed. _Okay, honey._ While she was fishing around in her bag for a fidget toy, Clint swiveled Natasha’s spinny chair so it was facing his. 

_You know I won’t let you go, right?_ he asked. 

Natasha’s brain was too overloaded to form a response, so she just nodded. 

_There are people here who care about you. Hey, look on the bright side- we don’t have to deal with Garrett today. Grant got arrested, so Garrett’s busy dealing with him at juvenile hall._

Natasha’s eyes widened and she allowed herself a tiny, tiny smile. 

_I know, right?_

She slowly untangled her hands from her hair and shrugged her backpack off of her shoulders, before curling herself up once more, with the bag tucked safely in her lap. 

_I should’ve burnt it._

She knew Clint understood what she was talking about. 

_Don’t know why I still carry it around. It’s not like I ever had any hopes we’d all be one big, happy family again._

_There are happy moments in any scary story,_ Miss Potts added. _It’s okay to hold on to them._

Clint nodded. _I’ve got you, Nat. I’m not going anywhere._ He squeezed her hand, and his grip was strong and warm and it felt like it might be the only thing keeping her from spiraling right at that moment. So she squeezed back. 

A while later, someone knocked gently on the meeting room door. Miss Potts stood up, smoothed her skirt, and told them she’d be right back, that she was just going to talk to the adults and they’d all sit down together in a few minutes. 

Nothing good ever tended to happen in ‘talks with the adults.’ 

_Where am I gonna end up?_ Natasha asked, signs small and reserved. 

_Tonight?_ Clint asked. She nodded. _Let’s see, today is a Friday, which usually means we’ll have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and then some kind of terrible group activity Sharon put together. And then we’ll probably stay up late because we can and Garrett won’t be there to yell at us._

 _You know that’s not what I meant._ Natasha picked at a loose seam on the inside of her sweatshirt and tried hard not to dig her fingernails into the scars on the insides of her arms. Miss Potts was really good at picking up on her nervous habits, and annoyingly persistent when it came to trying other ‘coping mechanisms.’ _They’re gonna make me go with my dad._

_Not if he’s dangerous they won’t. And he is, right?_

When she didn’t answer for a minute, Clint nudged her shoulder. 

Three year-old Natasha had been taught never, ever to interrupt Papa and his friends when they were working. 

Four year-old Natasha had been taught to stay in the bedroom with Yelena during Papa’s meetings, and to never, ever come out even if she was really hungry or bored or scared. 

Five year-old Natasha had been taught to keep quiet, and to never, ever tell. 

_You can tell the truth, Tasha. I won’t let anyone hurt you. He’s dangerous, right?_

She’d almost worked up the courage to nod when Miss Potts pushed the door open. Two other men followed her in the room- one a shorter guy in a suit and tie and the other taller, with long brown hair pulled up into a bun and a metal prosthetic in place of his left arm. 

Miss Potts sat down across from Natasha, but the two men remained standing on the far side of the table, neither one blocking the door. 

_I’m Bucky._ The guy with the metal arm signed as well as spoke. _I work with SHIELD Child Protective Services; I’m an interpreter._

“And I’m Phil.” The suit smiled and addressed the three seated at the table while Bucky interpreted. “You guys must be Clint and Natasha. Is it okay if we sit?” 

He waited patiently, one hand on the back of an office chair. Clint glanced at Natasha out of the corner of his eye. She gave him a minute nod, and Clint signed _yes._

“Thank you.” 

Bucky and Phil each took a seat. Phil pulled out a clipboard and a few files from a messenger bag she hadn’t noticed him carry into the room. Bucky just waited patiently, hands folded on the table, observing both of the kids. 

“Natasha,” Phil cleared his throat and shuffled a pile of papers, “I was able to find a copy of your green card, and Mr. Dreykov is listed as your father. Your mother brought you to the US three years ago, but your father stayed in Russia- is that right?” 

Phil looked at her, waiting for a response. 

She’d been through what seemed like dozens of these meetings before- answered the endless questions about whether or not she’d ever been abused, when was the last time she’d gotten in a fight, why she’d run away from her last placement. 

She didn’t think she’d ever once told the whole truth in any of those meetings. And none of the social workers she’d ever met cared enough to learn the full story, anyway.

“Honey, it’s important that you answer their questions. It will help us all figure out what’s going on and how best we can help you,” Miss Potts said. 

Clint squeezed her hand under the table. 

Natasha dipped her head, which Phil accepted as a nod and moved on. “Your mother was arrested when you were six, and you’ve been bounced around quite a lot since then.” That one wasn’t a question- it was pretty obvious just from the sheer thickness of her file. “Now, I have pretty much no information on your father, and I don’t know your entire case history, but my guess is that if I run a background check on your father, I’m not going to find anything good, am I?” 

Oh no. 

Miss Potts must have told this social worker she was scared and now the General was going to be mad at her and he was going to take her back to Russia and then she’d never find Yelena and she’d never see Clint again and- 

_Hey._ Bucky gently grabbed her attention. _I know that was a big question. Take your time._ And then, a moment later, _It’s safe to tell the truth, you know? Nothing you say leaves this room and we’re all here to keep you safe, okay?_

Natasha had started to shake a little, and she looked over to Clint, frantically searching for help. 

_It’s okay, Nat. I wouldn’t lie to you._ Then Clint gave her a firm nod and bumped her leg with his knee. _You don’t have to tell them everything now. That’s not what they’re asking for._

“Clint’s right,” Phil said. “We’re not asking you to tell us everything- that’s a lot to ask of anyone in a situation as scary as this. I just need to know what kind of a person your father is so I can figure out how he fits into this story.” 

Natasha took a tiny, panicked breath and signed, _He told me never to tell._

“He told you never to talk about what?” Phil asked in a quiet and gentle tone- not one Natasha was used to hearing from case workers. 

From outside the meeting room, Natasha could hear the door to the guidance office fly open and a cacophony of voices and heavy footsteps burst through it. 

“....you telling me I can’t leave here with my daughter? I will call police and get them involved- don’t think I won’t!” 

“Sir, we’re all just doing our best to figure out-” 

The meeting room door banged open next, and Natasha flinched, pushing away from the table on her spinny chair until the headrest bumped into the wall. 

“Mr. Dreykov, we’ll come talk to you when we’re ready, but right now-” 

“You can’t tell me what I can and cannot do with my daughter! She’s not an orphan, she has a father, and he’s taking her home, now!” The General was raging, cheeks red and eyes bulging with his massive frame towering over the table and blocking the door. 

“Technically, sir, she’s a ward of the state, so CPS makes the call in this situation. And you are not helping your case right now,” Phil said calmly. He was standing now, an entire head shorter than Dreykov but not phased in the slightest. 

Clint laid a hand over Natasha’s lap, drawing her in closer to his chair. She was crying again and she hadn’t noticed, not over the torrent of thoughts racing through her mind like gale-force winds.

“Наталья, тебе лучше сдержать свое обещание. Мы не можем быть семьей, если вы не.” 

“Buck, what’d he say?” Phil asked without turning his head. 

“He said, ‘Natalia, you’d better keep your promise. We can’t be a family unless you do.’”

Clint stood up, spun Natasha’s chair around, and picked her up out of it, shielding her against his chest. He flinched away from Dreykov’s wide, jerky hand movements as he roared in Russian. 

“Ненавижу, что твоя мать забрала тебя у меня.” 

“‘I hate that your mother took you away from me.’”

“Идти домой безопасно. Никто не преследует меня больше.” 

“‘It’s safe to go home. No one is chasing me anymore.’”

Natasha was sobbing uncontrollably into Clint’s hoodie. She could never go home, because there was no home to go back to. She was sick of keeping quiet and not telling and turning a blind eye to the people who took advantage of her. 

_Make it stop,_ she signed. 

“Эй!” Bucky barked. “Будет! Enough!” 

“Thank you, Buck,” Phil sighed. “You-” he pointed at Dreykov, “Out!” 

“I will call police!” 

“Sir, you are more than welcome to work with the Kings County Family Court on this matter, but for right now, my concern is for the scared little girl in this room, and you are not helping the situation.” Natasha dared to peek out from Clint’s shoulder and saw Phil take the General’s arm and march him out of the room by the sleeve of his parka. 

Phil returned a few moments later, closed the door quietly behind him, and sighed. Natasha jumped when the bell rang, signalling the end of sixth period. 

Clint looked down at her, confused, until she weakly signed _bell_. 

“Do you want to sit, Natasha?” Miss Potts had pulled out a pack of tissues from her seemingly bottomless bag and pushed them across the table. She looked shaken, but was still trying to wear her ‘unshakeable teacher’ face. She then turned around and peeked out the window of the meeting room door. “Principal Rhodes is walking Mr. Dreykov out, so you don’t have to worry about him any more right now.” 

Natasha relaxed a little in Clint’s arms and hesitantly reached out to take a tissue- she’d accidentally chewed her lip bloody and didn’t want anyone to know. 

“Мы не сделаем тебе больно.” 

We will not hurt you. 

Bucky’s voice was soft and rumbly and so different from the General’s booming growl. Neither him nor Phil came any closer or reached out to force her into a chair, just sat there and let her hide behind Clint. 

“Мы не отпустим вас, где вы не в безопасности. я обещаю.” 

We will not let you go anywhere you won’t be safe. I promise. 

Natasha wanted to believe him, she really did. But she’d made that mistake before- trusting, believing in false promises, letting herself get too comfortable- and she wasn’t willing to face the consequences again. 

“Absolutely not,” Bucky said. “No way. That man cannot take her.There is no case here, at all.”

He was standing outside the guidance office with Phil, Natasha’s aide, and Midtown Elementary’s principal. 

“She cannot be returned to that man’s custody. Look at the way she reacted!” Miss Potts interjected. 

“Alright, everyone just, pause.” Phil took a deep breath from his spot on Bucky’s left. “I have no intentions of allowing that man anywhere near her.” Principal Rhodes and Miss Potts both visibly deflated in relief. “I know I don’t have the full story here, but I also know that I’m not going to get it today. What we do need to focus on is making sure she’s safe. That’s my number one priority.” 

“Who’s the boy with her?” Bucky asked. They seemed close, but he knew they weren’t siblings. The boy was so protective of her, and she clung to him like he was her only port in a storm. It made him sad to think that he probably was. 

“They live in the same group home. They’ve been inseparable ever since Natasha moved in a few weeks ago,” Miss Potts said. 

Bucky shook his head. “Phil, a group home is not the right place for that girl. She has some of the worst post-traumatic stress I’ve ever seen in a kid.” 

Phil nodded, mouth drawn into a thin line. Bucky had been working as a translator with SHIELD CPS long enough that he’d seen a little bit of everything, a little bit of all the different ugly sides of humanity and how that ugliness left kids caught in the crossfire. 

“I knew she’d had it rough, but I didn’t know about…” Principal Rhodes made a vague gesture towards the office, where Dreykov’s looming figure had been shouting in Russian just a few minutes ago. 

“It’s hard, with these kids, to get the whole story. They’ve been bullied their whole lives to not tell, so they just keep it to themselves. They don’t have any concept of the idea of ‘asking for help’ because it’s likely never been presented to them,” Phil replied. 

“Will you help us figure out how to best support her?” Miss Potts asked. 

“Of course. Part of that help is going to have to come from a psychologist, but that’s a discussion for another day. Today needs to be about making sure she has a safe place to sleep tonight.” 

“I can call Steve,” Bucky said.

“Are you sure?” Phil asked. “You guys already have two other kids.” 

“What about Clint?” Principal Rhodes asked. “Where does he fall in this situation?” 

“They need each other,” Bucky said and shrugged. “It’s not that complicated.” 

Phil laughed a little. “He’s not wrong.” 

“What do you mean?” Principal Rhodes asked. 

“Foster kids often go through childhood with very little support, so it’s important that when they find it, they keep it. It’s why we try to place biological siblings together if possible,” Phil clarified. 

“That makes sense.” 

Bucky pulled out his phone and pressed his flesh thumb to the home button to unlock it. He knew Steve usually had appointments with clients until about four or five, but if he caught him in the ten-or-so minute break between sessions, they might be able to talk. 

“I’m gonna go call Steve,” Bucky murmured to Phil as he excused himself from the group. He wandered a little ways down the hallway and pressed the little ‘call’ icon next to Steve’s profile picture in his contacts. 

“Hey, Buck, what’s up?” 

Steve answered on the second ring, which let Bucky know that he was probably lounging on the couch in his office, scrolling through his phone instead of typing up patient notes. 

Bucky cleared his throat. “Hey, so, I’m at Midtown with Phil filling in for Garrett, and this case is, um, a mess. The kids are a mess as a result and uh-”

“Okay, Buck. Take a breath.” He could hear Steve sitting up on the other end of the line. He’d switched into ‘therapist mode,’ which at times Bucky found endearing and at others, annoying. He wasn’t ashamed to say he kind of needed Therapist Steve right now. “You sound really overwhelmed.” 

Bucky huffed out a sigh and ran his metal hand through his hair, loosening the pull of the elastic on his scalp. “That’s what happens when you spend an hour using three different languages to deal with an angry Russian national who wants his daughter back.” 

“Sounds like a rough one.” Steve blew out a breath. 

“Yeah. There’s two kids involved- both have PTSD and have been in an ungodly amount of group homes this year alone. The girl has selective mutism and the boy is Deaf.” 

“The girl’s father- is he a fit parent?” 

“God no. She’s not safe, Steve. Phil’s trying to find a safe place for them to stay while he-we, I don’t know- sort this mess out.” 

“I’ll cancel my three o’clock.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Phil take Clint and Natasha to the Barnes-Rogers household, where they meet their other foster father and the Barnes-Rogers kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, boy. This chapter got a little chunky- it's over 5,200 words long. I hope you guys don't mind the long chapters; I just feel like they're necessary to tell this story in a way that doesn't feel rushed or unorganized. 
> 
> I've been so excited to introduce you guys to the Barnes-Rogers kids! Clint and Natasha deserve a big happy family, but nothing worth having ever comes easy. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all the love and support I've been getting on this fic! It means a lot to know you guys are liking it so far! I plan on posting Chapter Six on Thursday, May 28. Enjoy! (And maybe grab a snack or something because this sucker was a 9-page, single spaced Word doc).

They didn’t have to go back to class for the last period of the day. Miss Potts grabbed Clint’s backpack from Mr. Fitz’s room and Principal Rhodes walked them out to Phil’s black minivan. Clint didn’t feel like he could breath until he was buckled into the backseat next to Natasha- he’d spent the past hour fighting down the panic that he’d never see her again, that Phil would hand Natasha back to her biological father and wipe his hands of the whole matter. 

He’d learned very quickly to develop a healthy distrust of social workers. They were the first faces he saw when things went from bad to worse- when he’d gotten arrested for theft, when he’d gotten out of juvie and learned his brother was nowhere to be found, when he’d failed to make a good impression on one foster family after another. 

Clint could practically feel the anxiety rolling off of Natasha from her seat next to him. She was pale and tense and had a death grip on her backpack in her lap, like she was afraid Phil was going to take it from her. 

_ Hey.  _ He bumped his leg against hers gently, hoping the gentle touch might snap her out of her own head for a moment. 

She jumped but glanced over at him, hands shaking. 

_ Whatever comes next, at least we get to face it together.  _

_ For how long?  _ Natasha shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the roots.  _ I can’t run from him, he won’t stop.  _

_ Your dad?  _

She nodded. 

_ Phil wouldn’t let him take you today, Nat. I know this is scary but let’s go one day at a time, okay? _

_ But he’s gonna want the truth and I can’t tell anyone the truth- he made me promise.  _ Natasha’s signs got bigger and more emphasized the more upset she got, hands waving. Clint caught Phil’s gaze flashing back to them from the rearview mirror, but he didn’t shake his head or turn around to yell at them, just gave Clint a small nod and returned his focus to the road. 

_ I don’t want to move in with another family and then get returned like a rental car and moved on to the next group home. I’m tired of it,  _ she said a moment later, signs smaller and more subdued this time. 

_ I know.  _

Clint did. Being a foster kid meant you were treated as a commodity- something that got returned to the store when it came broken in the box. Group homes were a little better in some ways, because then people didn’t expect much from what they were getting.

_ Wanna know one good thing?  _ Clint nudged Natasha’s shoulder.  _ Miss Potts forgot to give us our homework before we left.  _

Natasha double checked her ‘take home’ folder and gave him a sly grin when she noticed that her aide had in fact forgotten to slip that weekend’s homework inside. 

Clint wished she’d smile more often. 

Phil parallel parked the van into a metered spot in front of Garrett’s group home twenty minutes later, then gestured to the two kids to climb out the backseat on the sidewalk side of the car. Bucky’s white SUV pulled into the spot right behind them. 

_ You two can go inside,  _ Phil signed slowly.  _ I’ll meet you in there in a few minutes.  _ Natasha didn’t respond to him, and Phil was nervous at first that he’d mixed up a sign or two, but Clint nodded at him a moment later, took the girl’s hand, and led her in through the front door. 

Phil adjusted his CPS badge, clipped to the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Buck, don’t forget your badge,” he called out just as he was about to lock the SUV. Bucky nodded and ducked back into the front seat, rummaging around in the cupholder before reemerging with his credentials and ID clipped to a belt loop on the front of his jeans. 

“You ever worked with John Garrett?” Bucky asked him. 

Phil nodded. “A few times, but mostly in passing. Not my favorite, if I’m being honest with you.” 

Bucky nodded and stood behind Phil as he hit the buzzer by the front door. 

A young, blonde-haired woman answered. “Garrett texted me and let me know you guys took over Natasha and Clint’s cases for him today. I’m Sharon; you must be Phil and James.” 

“Bucky,” Bucky said, and offered her a handshake as they stepped into the house. 

“I sent them upstairs to get their stuff,” Sharon said. She led them into the dining room and gestured for Phil and Bucky to sit.“Those two seem like good kids; it’s a shame nobody’s ever really taken the time to give them a chance.” 

Phil nodded. “Natasha’s case just got a lot more complicated, and we want to make sure she’s safe while we figure out where to go from here. And we just don’t feel like a group home’s the best setting for her or Clint right now.” 

“I’m glad they get to stay together. They’re good for each other.” 

Just then, the front door burst open and a hoard of middle schoolers flooded the entryway. 

“Shoes off, guys,” Sharon called from her seat. 

The kids all jostled one another as they shucked off coats, tossed backpacks aside, and elbowed their way to a good seat in front of the TV in what Phil assumed was the main living room. The house itself was nice enough, but just...plain, and devoid of color or personality or anything that might make it feel like more of a home and less of a waystation. 

Phil talked with Sharon for a few more minutes, filling out paperwork and consulting the kids’ file when necessary. Half an hour later, another group of kids pounded into the house. Phil saw Bucky check the time on his watch and knew it must be the elementary-aged kids. 

The house dissolved into noise and chaos with the addition of seven more bodies. They were all talking about Grant- the kid who’d gotten arrested and the reason Garrett was MIA at the moment. Some of the kids raced up to the bedrooms, others stayed downstairs to play. Elephant feet stomped around upstairs, and everyone bickered and argued and Sharon just looked exhausted, even though everyone had only just gotten home. 

“Bucky, can you go check and see if Natasha and Clint are ready to go while I call Garrett one more time?” 

“Sure.” He glanced at Sharon. 

“The bedrooms are right up the stairs- boys on the left, girls on the right.” 

The bedrooms upstairs were unbelievably crowded- beds crammed into every available space and mismatched end tables and dressers shoved between them. Bucky found Clint and Natasha in a corner of the girls’ room, pulling her belongings out of a hidey hole between the bunk bed and the wall. 

As soon as Natasha noticed him standing in the doorway, she snatched up the rest of her stuff, shoved it in her bag, and held it tight to her stomach, arms wrapped around it and body hunched away from him. Bucky lifted his hands up, gently, and walked slowly to sit on the edge of one of the room’s single beds. 

_ I’m not here to take anything,  _ he signed.  _ I just came up to check on you guys. Almost ready to go?  _

Clint nodded, but Natasha looked unsure, even though Bucky could already tell she’d packed pretty much everything she had into the pink backpack of hers. 

His chest ached for these kids- they had no real space or belongings of their own, and what they did have was always being bullied away from them by someone else, be that child or adult. One of the younger boys shrieked as he ran down the hallway, and Natasha flinched, hands coming up to cover her ears. Clint just sat next to her, close but not touching, and it reminded Bucky of the way his older son acted with his youngest- hopelessly gentle. 

A girl who looked to be around Natasha’s age wandered into the room. She had olive skin and dark brown hair, and she stood right in front of Bucky with her arms crossed. 

“You’re sitting on my bed.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. 

Bucky stood up and shuffled to the lean against the window. “Sorry,” he said. 

The girl didn’t reply, but turned her attention to Clint and Natasha. “Garrett didn’t want to take you two in, you know. He doesn’t have time for special needs. You can be someone else’s problem now.” She grabbed a book out of her bedside table and stalked out of the room. 

What Bucky hated about the foster system was that it wasn’t built to help kids; it was designed to  _ deal with them _ , like they were some kind of issue you could just brush under the rug when it became inconvenient. These two had had all the odds stacked against them for years, and Bucky was getting a little overwhelmed thinking of how they hadn’t ever been given the chance to be kids because they’d been so busy simply surviving. He couldn’t wait to get them out of here. 

Bucky watched the two kids’ reaction closely. Clint turned to Natasha, eyebrows drawn together. Natasha just shook her head and signed,  _ She’s just mad her brother’s not here right now.  _

Ah. So that must have been Grant’s sister. 

The banging from downstairs increased, and the volume had risen to shouting level. Scuffling and grunting sounds drifted up the stairs, and Bucky was almost positive Phil was now being roped into breaking up a fight between two of the kids. Natasha kept her hands clamped firmly over her ears and leaned against Clint’s shoulder, groaning a little. 

_ Alright guys, time to go,  _ Bucky said. He stood up and off to the side so the kids could walk in front of him, but Natasha refused to budge and Clint shook his head. 

_ She won’t leave until you do- doesn’t like anyone behind her.  _

Bucky just nodded and walked out of the room first. His hypervigilance had been that bad for a while after he was discharged from the Army. He wouldn’t sit anywhere but against the wall, facing the door; he’d jump at loud noises; he’d automatically start swinging on anyone who walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. It took him months of intense therapy before he was even able to leave the house to go to the grocery store with Steve, so he could relate to what Natasha was feeling. 

Bucky walked back up towards the front of the house, where Sharon was glaring at two boys seated on the couch, the younger one with a black eye blossoming from his left eyebrow to the top of his cheekbone. Phil was panting ever so slightly, and reached his hands up to his neck to straighten his tie. 

“Alexander Goodwin Pierce- he’s nearly half your age!” Bucky could tell Sharon was livid, but she wasn’t yelling- just looming overtop of the two troublemakers with her arms crossed and one of the most impressive stink eyes he’d ever seen. 

“But Ian-,” the older kid started. 

“Nope. I don’t need to hear it. Upstairs, now. Homework- do it.” Thoroughly chastised, Alexander grumbled his way out of the room and dragged his backpack up the stairs, making sure his textbooks thumped on every step. “Ian, let’s get some ice on your face.” Bucky could tell from her tone that this was not Ian’s first time in a fight, nor would it be his last. 

“Thanks for the help, Phil,” she said on her way out of the living room, steering Ian towards what Bucky could only assume was the kitchen. “Do you guys need anything else before you leave?” 

_ Clint, Natasha- you guys good?  _ Bucky asked. 

Clint nodded. Natasha just shuffled her feet and looked down at the floor, so he was just going to take that as an affirmative for now. 

“We’re all set, Sharon, thank you,” Phil said. 

They were almost at the front door when one of the older girls rushed out of the living room and slid to a stop in the entryway. She hugged Clint, tight, and signed  _ You two take care of each other, okay?  _

Clint signed back,  _ Of course. See you around, Victoria.  _ Natasha gave her a tiny nod. 

While Phil slid open the backseat door of the minivan and tucked Clint’s bag into the trunk, Victoria stood on the front porch, waving. Bucky fished around in the pockets of his jeans for the keys to his SUV. When he looked up, key fob in hand, the girl wiped a tear off of her cheek and tucked that pink streak of hair behind her ear. By the time he’d unlocked the car and was situated in the front seat, she’d gone back inside, letting the heavy door slam shut behind her. 

Steve was a nervous wreck. 

He’d cancelled his afternoon appointments and then picked the boys up from school on his way home. They’d had a snack, and were now happily playing upstairs in their bedroom, model cars and Legos all over their racetrack rug. 

Once he’d gotten them settled with toys, Steve had explained to them that there were two kids just like them who needed their help now, and was it okay if they stayed for a while. His youngest, Bruce, had just shrugged and returned to directing miniature traffic.His older son had asked questions one can only expect from a seven year-old- not ‘Where will they sleep?’ or ‘Do I have to share my toys now?,’ but ‘Do you think they like race cars?’ and ‘What kind of movies do they like?’. 

Steve had told him that he didn’t know what their favorite movies were, but he was excited to find out because then they could all watch them together. 

After that, he’d gotten a text from Bucky- ‘Just left their group home. Should be home in half an hour or so.’ 

Steve had spent that half an hour trying to burn off his nervous energy, rearranging the furniture in the upstairs office/ playroom and trying to figure out how on earth they’d get the massive oak desk down the stairs to turn the space into another bedroom. He was so frazzled that he couldn’t even remember how they’d gotten the desk up there in the first place. 

Steve’s thought spiral was interrupted by the front door opening and several pairs of feet shuffling into the entryway. 

“Can you guys be good and play up here while I go downstairs and talk to Phil and your papa?” Steve asked, poking his head into the kids’ bedroom. Bruce whined a little and scooted across the floor to make grabby hands at Steve. “I know, bud,” he whispered, swooping the boy up and squeezing him tight. “I promise we won’t be too long, okay?” 

“I got him, Dad. Go ahead.” His older son took Bruce from his arms, and settled him back down on the floor between his legs. 

“Thanks, pal.” Steve planted a kiss on top of both boys’ heads, eased the door shut, and walked downstairs, forcing himself to take a few deep, slow, grounding breaths on the way down. 

“Hey, Steve.” Bucky caught him at the bottom of the stairs and wrapped him in a warm, solid hug. “We got this, right?” 

“Yeah, babe. We got this.” Steve wound his arms around Bucky’s waist and leaned into him for a moment. 

“Hey, just remember, if you’re gonna speak, you gotta sign at the same time, okay?” Bucky whispered. “And just, try not to make a ton of noise or sudden movements- Natasha’s really hypervigilant and Clint startles easily at least from what I’ve seen so far and-” 

“Buck,” Steve murmured. “Don’t worry. I got this. We got this.” 

Bucky took a deep breath, his chest pressing into Steve’s ever so slightly. “Thanks for coming home early.” 

“Of course.” Steve tilted his head down to kiss Bucky’s forehead. “Alright, we ready?” 

“C’mon, punk.” 

Steve smiled at the two extra pairs of shoes on the doormat as Bucky led him down the hallway and into the row house’s living room. 

Phil was sitting on the ottoman, case files on the coffee table. Two kids stood on the other side of the room, looking like they were trying very hard not to touch anything. 

“You guys can sit if you want, or put your bags down,” Steve said, signing at the same time. He wasn’t nearly as advanced a signer as Bucky, but he’d been helping him practice, and Steve was really proud of the progress he’d made since they’d brought Bruce into their home. 

“Steve, this is Clint,” Phil motioned to the older boy, “and Natasha,” and then to the girl standing next to him. Clint was a scrappy looking kid- scruffy hair, calloused knuckles, lanky hair- frame dwarfed by an oversized hoodie with thumb holes cut into the wrists. Natasha had tucked herself behind him, gaze fixated on the floor with hands clutching the straps of her backpack and face hidden by a curtain of wild red curls. 

“Hey, guys. I’m Steve. I’m Bucky’s husband.” 

Clint gave him a half-hearted wave, and Natasha gave no response besides shuffling a little closer to Clint and pressing herself into his back. 

_ I know today has been a rough day, but you two are safe here, okay? I promise,  _ Bucky signed. Steve knew he absolutely despised sim-com, and most of the time preferred to just sign voice-off. 

Steve knew from his experience with their two adopted (formerly foster) sons that it would take a long time for them to earn trust from these kids, and it would take even longer for them to feel truly safe. Most foster homes were temporary, so the kids tended not to let themselves get too comfortable in any one environment in order to make the next move easier. 

That was no way for a kid to grow up. 

Phil cleared his throat. “Do you guys have a photocopy of your fostering license? I need to add it to their file.” 

“Yeah, I have a copy upstairs in the office. I can go grab it.” Steve glanced over at Bucky. “Want me to grab the boys?” 

“Sure.” 

Steve nodded and dashed back upstairs to root through the filing cabinet. With the license shoved in his back pocket, he knocked gently on the boys’ bedroom door and poked his head in. “Want to come downstairs, guys?” 

Both of them nodded. As soon as the door was open all the way, Bruce abandoned his Hot Wheels, wrapped his arms around Steve’s legs, and tugged on the hem of his shirt to be picked up again. 

“C’mere, buddy,” Steve whispered, grabbing the four year-old under his armpits and situating him on his hip. “Can we all try and remember to use our inside voices so we don’t scare our guests?” 

Bruce nodded into Steve’s neck. 

“Alright, guys, let’s go.” 

Phil and Bucky were now both sitting on the couch, arms leaning on the coffee table while they filled out paperwork. Steve had said they could sit down, but Natasha knew better. Better to stand, so as not to get anything dirty. 

Little feet pounded down the stairs and skidded into the living room. 

“Hi Phil!” A young boy smiled at the social worker, giving him a wave from his spot in the doorway. His gaze then shifted across the room. “Natasha?” he asked. 

She peeked out from behind Clint’s shoulder and her curtain of hair. The little boy bouncing on the balls of his feet was Tony, the kid from Miss May’s class. 

Natasha’s stomach froze up in her throat. Here was this hyper boy from school who already knew how awkward and scared she was all the time, who probably spent all recess listening to Jasper talking mean about her behind her back. 

Tony walked into the living room, grinning. “This is so cool- we kinda already know each other!” He turned to Clint. “I’m Tony. Natasha and I sit at the same table at school and we get to help each other and work on projects together sometimes when Miss May says group work is allowed. Natasha’s quiet, but I like her. What’s your name?” 

Clint half turned to glance at Natasha, brows furrowed. Natasha was having trouble processing Tony’s word vomit so she could only imagine what Clint was feeling. 

Natasha took a deep breath. The anxiety in the pit of her stomach was starting to make her nauseous.  _ Can you sign, please? He’s Deaf.  _ Natasha gestured at Clint, signs small and made close to her body. As soon as she’d finished, she tucked herself back behind Clint and hoped nobody would get mad at her for correcting him. 

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t know,” Tony said, signing as he spoke (thankfully, a little slower). “I’m Tony; Natasha and I are both in Miss May’s class at school.” 

_ No worries. I’m Clint.  _

At that point, Steve stepped into the room holding a curly-haired little boy in his arms. 

“Oh!” Tony rushed over to Steve and tugged the boy out of his arms. “This is my little brother, Bruce! He doesn’t like to talk much, either, and that’s okay. We don’t mind.” 

Bruce peeked shyly out from behind Tony’s leg, but refused to look either Clint or Natasha in the eye. 

“Wanna show them your toys, Brucie?” Tony tugged his brother forward and towards the toy bin Natasha hadn’t noticed earlier. He brushed past her shoulder, and Natasha jumped backwards so fast she crashed into Clint a little bit. He let out a tiny ‘oof’ and steadied her, placing one hand in the center of her chest and trying to help her control her breathing. 

She was already so overwhelmed and now she had to live with a classmate who would get to know some of the ugly parts of her, who would tell everyone else and there was no better way to ruin a foster kid’s attempts at staying under the radar than starting a well-placed rumor or two. And that was all she wanted- the ability to keep her head down and stay out of trouble and hope people didn’t notice her, because then maybe she’d get to stay somewhere for longer than a few months. 

Clint’s hand, while normally helpful, now felt suffocating, and she pushed away from him, not wanting hands on her. So she just stood in the middle of the living room rug, shaking and trying not to cry or hyperventilate. 

“Hey, Tony,” Steve called from his spot perched on the arm of the sofa next to Bucky. “Remember what I said about being gentle?” 

“Oh,” he said, looking up from where he’d been pulling out a bin of Legos from the corner bookcase. “Sorry.” He plopped down on the floor and pulled his knees up to his chest, just waiting and watching. Bruce wasn’t paying any of them any mind- he’d wandered back towards what appeared to be the kitchen and was entertaining himself by humming softly and playing with some kind of toy hanging by a string around his neck. But Phil and Steve and Bucky and Tony were all looking at her and probably expecting her to pull herself together and act normal but in that moment she just couldn’t. 

_ Hey, can I touch you?  _ Clint turned his back on the adults in the room, which she knew he didn’t like doing, in order to shield her a little. She kept glancing back out at the hallway, towards the door. She was fast. It wouldn’t take her long to grab her shoes and disappear down a side street and then maybe they’d all just leave her alone. 

Her thought spiral must have been visible on her face because suddenly Clint was tugging gently on her hand and Steve was saying something to her but it just sounded like rushing static around the panic. 

_ Tasha.  _ Clint stepped closer and ensured he was in her line of sight.  _ Come here.  _ He pulled her out of the room and she just let him, all the air pushed out of her chest in one big sob as soon as they were out in the hallway and away from everyone else.  _ Okay, okay. Just breathe, you’re fine. Can I?  _ He opened his arms and waited, close to tears himself. 

Natasha managed to nod, and Clint wrapped his arms around her from behind and guided her down to the floor as his back slid against the wall. He hugged her against his front and breathed slowly, in and out, and squeezed her hand in time with his breaths. 

Clint rocked her slowly in place, his ribs poking her in the back a little. She couldn’t focus on anything other than what was happening in her head- one half of her brain screaming ‘panic’ and the other half screaming ‘brother.’ 

The therapist in Steve urged him to do something, but the parent in him knew this wasn’t something he could fix, not today. Tony was comfortable enough around Steve now that he’d come to him or Bucky if he skinned his knee or had a nightmare (Bruce was getting there), but it had taken a long time, and Clint and Natasha were only at the beginning of that journey. He hadn’t earned their trust yet, so for now he had to be okay with the two of them leaning on each other while they figured out that there were people in their lives who would care, and catch them, if they fell. 

“Phil, what happened to these kids? What’s their story?” Steve asked, keeping his voice low so as not to let Natasha overhear anything from the hallway. He was bent over with his elbows digging into his thighs, hands folded in front of him. 

“Well,” Phil began, shuffling papers in the kids’ file, “I’ve only gotten to read their case summaries, but from what I’ve gathered so far, Clint was born in Iowa. His father was physically abusive, but he lived with his parents until they died in a car crash when he was six years old. He ran away to hide out with a travelling circus to avoid being taken by CPS. The carnies abandoned him in New York City when he was arrested for theft and NYPD traced them back to an organized crime ring. Clint’s been bounced around ever since. 

Natasha, I don’t know nearly as much about. Her file is massive, but there’s so many missing pieces that it would be almost impossible to fill in the blanks.” 

“What do you know?” Steve asked. Bucky put a hand on his shoulder and Steve leaned into it. 

“She was born in Stalingrad-” 

“Russia?” 

Phil nodded. “Her mother brought her and her sister to the US three years ago, leaving the father behind for reasons I can’t figure out. The mom was arrested barely a full year later for prostitution, possession, and drug trafficking. CPS took custody of Natasha and her sister, Yelena, and placed them in a group home together. Natasha ran away a few months later and thus began the cycle of her being brought into, and then running away from, the foster system.” 

“What happened to her sister?” Bucky asked. 

“Got lost in the system.” Phil sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Probably had her case transferred to another agency that never updated us with records.” 

“How does her father fit into all of this?” Steve asked. 

“Can I be honest here?” Phil asked. Steve and Bucky both nodded, and he continued. “I have no idea. He’s a Russian national, so I have access to very minimal information on him- mostly just records of the times he’s been through US customs and had his passport stamped. He’s not here on a green card- he flew into John F. Kennedy last night and my guess is, he’s got two return tickets in his wallet.” 

“Why didn’t he come to the US with the rest of his family three years ago?” 

“My best guess? They were running away from him, and he’s only now figured out where they ended up,” Phil said. 

Steve glanced over at Bucky, whose face had paled into a slightly ashen white. 

“I don’t know anything for certain,” Phil quickly added. “But I’ve been doing this long enough to know when to trust my gut, and my gut says that Dreykov is not a good man.” 

Steve gritted his teeth. He was used to hearing horror stories- it came with the territory of being a therapist, but it never got easier hearing these kinds of things happening to kids. 

“That’s why I wanted to make sure she was somewhere safe while this whole mess is figured out. And I couldn’t take her away from Clint, not when she’d finally found someone to trust. Thank you guys for taking them in,” Phil finished. 

“Don’t worry,” Bucky said. “Anyone who tries to get to Natasha and Clint has to get through me and Steve first.” 

“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” Phil laughed. Even Steve smiled. Him and Bucky had met in the Army, and they’d been a fierce duo, even as twenty-one year-old recruits fresh out of basic training. 

The three of the lapsed into silence, and Steve noticed that the crying and panicked gasps coming from the hallway had quieted down, but not yet ceased. 

“Daddy?” Tony’s little voice piped up from the corner. 

“Yeah, bud?” 

“I didn’t mean to scare her.” He was still curled into a little ball on the carpet, chin on his knees. “I don’t like when people are loud, either. Shoulda been better.” 

Steve slid off of the couch and onto the floor, then opened his arms. Tony hesitated for a minute, then darted into the hug from across the room and tucked his head in the crook of Steve’s neck. 

“It’s okay, buddy. You didn’t mean to. We just have to remember to be extra gentle, okay?” Tony nodded into his shoulder. 

Bruce wandered back out from behind the couch, stim toy in his mouth. He plopped on the floor in front of Tony, rocking back and forth with his hands over his ears.  _ Sad?  _ he signed, then pointed out at the hallway. 

“Yeah, squirt. Natasha’s a little sad. But we’ll all help her feel better, okay? Her and Clint need a family now, just like you and Tony once did,” Bucky said. 

At that, Bruce stood up, walked over to the toy bin in the corner, and picked out one of his favorite stim toys- a weighted stuffed dog that smelled like lavender when you warmed it up in the microwave. He liked it during movie time, or when he was upset; the grounding pressure gave him something to focus on so he could calm down. 

Bruce picked up the toy and walked with it out into the hallway, swaying a little bit with the awkward weight. Steve heard it thump onto the rug out there and then Bruce tiptoed back into the living room, sucking on his chewable pendant. 

“What was that for, bud?” Steve asked. 

Bruce looked over at him and even dared a glance at the bottom of Steve’s chin (his version of ‘eye contact’) and simply signed,  _ Family.  _


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha's first night in the Barnes-Rogers household is a little rough, but maybe not all bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Sorry today's update went up a little late; I was at work all day. I'll be posting a new chapter on Monday, June 1. That chapter may go up a little later in the day as well, since Monday is the first day of my summer semester of college. But I will be posting an update, nevertheless! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy Chapter Six! I had fun writing Clint and Natasha's first night in their new home. Just a quick note- this chapter does contain references to self-harm and sexual assault, but nothing graphic (please stay safe!). 
> 
> This chapter is once again a bit on the long side (almost 4500 words), but you guys said you liked the longer chapters, so I'm just gonna go for it! Thank you for your continued support on this fic, and happy reading!

Bucky stood up off the couch, padded across the rug, and stepped out into the hall. The two kids were tucked into the corner next to the closet door, Natasha pressed up against Clint with Bruce’s weighted stuffed dog in her lap. He waved gently in Clint’s periphery to catch his attention. 

_We’re gonna start dinner in the kitchen, okay?_ Clint started to get up, and gently pushed Natasha off of his chest. Bucky held up his hands. _No, it’s okay. Take as long as you need. I just wanted to let you know where we’d be in case either of you needed anything, okay?_

Clint nodded. 

_Do you two like pancakes? We’re having breakfast for dinner._

_Sure._ Bucky turned to give them some privacy, but Clint caught his attention with a quick flash of his hand. _Uh, thanks._

Bucky smiled at him, though his focus had already returned to Natasha, who seemed calmer, but still refused to look up or respond to the world around her. 

Bucky walked back through the living room and into the kitchen, where Steve was pulling ingredients out of the baking cupboard and Phil was hunched over the breakfast bar nursing a cup of coffee. Tony and Bruce were both sitting at the kitchen table, occupied with little plastic sensory tubs of Orbeez and kinetic sand. 

Bucky tugged his hair out of its bun, looped the elastic around his wrist, and ran his hands first over his scalp and then down to massage his temples. Steve must have noticed, because he’d abandoned measuring out milk and baking powder to come over and massage the base of his neck. Bucky groaned and leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder. 

“Headache?” he whispered. 

Bucky nodded. 

“Want some Advil?” 

“No, but I’ll take a cup of that coffee if there’s any left.” 

“Sure, babe.” 

“Do you two heathens still drink it black?” Phil twisted himself around on the cushioned bar stool. 

“Old habit. Here, Buck.” Steve passed Bucky a steaming mug. “How are they doin’ out there?” 

“Okay. Clint just looks, I don’t know, sad. Natasha looks calmer, but she didn’t even so much as look up when I went out to check on them. Looked like she was trying to hide.” 

“She’s probably dissociated, at least a little bit,” Steve said. “The weight from Bruce’s toy should help ground her. I think my trying to help would only make things worse for her right now.” Steve got quiet then, and busied himself with sifting flour into the bowl. 

“They need a lot of time, and patience,” Phil said, voice quiet and subdued. “They’ve built up some serious walls, so your first hurdle is going to be helping them to feel safe.” 

Bucky nodded. That was easier said than done. Tony’s parents had died in a car accident when he was five, but his father had been a real piece of work. Bruce had come to them just shy of a year ago as an emergency placement. His family was very much alive, but was abusive and neglectful and had put a three year-old through things most adults wouldn’t have survived. 

Tony still hid in the upstairs closet when he heard shouting or loud, sudden noises. Bruce’s speech was developing very slowly, and he still had nightmares and wet the bed and screamed and cried and had panic attacks when anybody tried to touch or comfort him afterwards. Tony had survived the accident that killed his parents, and didn’t like anyone to touch the pacemaker doctors had had to put in his chest to keep his heart beating afterwards. Bruce had survived an early childhood of severe abuse and neglect, and had trouble being around other people as a result. 

Bucky and Steve both loved their boys very much, and had spent every moment since bringing the kids into their house teaching them that they didn’t have to be invisible and afraid anymore. It made Bucky so angry that the people who had once called these kids ‘family’ had acted like monsters instead of fathers. Steve had broken a mug in his bare hands a few months ago, after getting back from court. Seeing Bruce’s father in person had made Bucky want to break something, too. But, like, the man’s face as opposed to a New York City monuments mug. 

“Boys, what do you want in your pancakes?” Steve called. Bucky looked up, realizing he was out of coffee and his headache had eased to a dull throb behind his eyes. 

“Blueberries!” Tony called, hands buried in pink kinetic sand that smelled like some unidentifiable artificial fruit. 

Bucky turned around to glance over at the boys. Tony had wiped his hands off and turned around in his chair so he could face his brother. 

_Brucie, Dad asked what you want in your pancakes._ Tony signed nice and slow so Bruce could process what was being asked of him. _You can tell him._

Bruce fidgeted, hands still in the Orbeez tub. He was watching Tony’s hands but refused to look at his brother’s face. 

Bruce had a terrible time making decisions or telling someone what he wanted, because before he’d lived with Steve and Bucky, every choice had been the wrong one, and wanting anything was seen as a punishable weakness. In the four year-old’s eyes, no answer was safer than the wrong one. They’d been trying to show him that it was okay to ask for things he wanted or needed, and when that was too overwhelming, that it was okay to say so, too. 

Tony was achingly patient with his brother, as ever. _Do you like blueberries?_ he signed. Bruce glanced down at his lap, bit his lip, but nodded slowly. Tony beamed. 

_Cool, Bruce! We can share the blueberry ones! What about banana?_ Tony signed ‘banana,’ then ‘monkey,’ and danced around Bruce’s chair waving his arms and hooting like a chimpanzee. 

Bruce giggled, but wrinkled his nose and signed, _Banana’s too...squishy._ To emphasize his point, he flexed his little fingers in the tub of Orbeez and popped one between his pointer finger and thumb. It must have taken him a few seconds to realize what he’d said, but once he did, he scrambled out of his chair and slid under the table, eyes wide. 

Tony wiped his hands on a napkin and closed up the sensory tubs, then scooted his chair so Bucky could squat down under the table. 

_Good job for telling us what you want, buddy. You don’t have to hide, though. It’s okay to not like something. We don’t have to make banana pancakes._ Bucky glanced around, then leaned in close like he was entrusting Bruce with a very important secret. _Your daddy doesn’t like bananas either,_ he signed, then pointed over his shoulder at Steve. 

“Can you help me set the table, bud?” Bucky asked, switching back to voice. He held his flesh arm out to the boy hiding under the table, and breathed a sigh of relief when that little boy took his hand and his Bruce emerged, still looking a little nervous but no longer full-on scared. 

Steve nodded at him and smiled as he slid another batch of pancakes in the oven to keep warm. “He’s come a long way,” Phil noted quietly. 

“He really has,” Steve said, voice all warm and soft. “He’s still got a lot of challenges to face, but he’s finally starting to feel comfortable acting like a kid again.” 

“You guys are the best fit for him. And Tony is such a good big brother.” Phil said that last part loud enough for Tony to hear, who then blushed a light shade of pink. 

Bucky pulled some plates out of the cabinets for Bruce to lay out on the table. Tony had just started pulling silverware out of the drawer when Phil cleared his throat and two sets of socked feet padded through the living room and stood in the entryway to the kitchen. 

Natasha was tucked behind Clint, one hand clutching Bruce’s weighted stuffed animal and the other fiddling with the strings on her hoodie. Her bottom lip was a little red and swollen, like she’d bitten it. Clint looked exhausted, dark circles a deep purple underneath his eyes. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and just hovered in the doorway, waiting anxiously. 

_Good timing, guys. We’re just about to sit down for dinner,_ Bucky signed. 

_What do you two want to drink?_ Steve asked. He’d pulled glasses out onto the counter and was prepared to take orders, milk and juice cartons laid out in front of him, as well as a pitcher of water. 

_Water, please,_ Clint signed. Natasha nodded, so Steve poured her a glass of water, as well. 

Bucky noticed that Clint’s hands were shaking a little, but didn’t say anything. He glanced over at Steve and could tell he’d noticed, as well. 

_You can sit next to me, if you want._ Tony pulled out the bench seat on the side of the table closest to the wall, sat down, and scooted over to the end to make room. 

It was a tight squeeze with seven people around their little kitchen table, but they made it work. Steve was helping Bruce cut his pancakes, and Phil had to confiscate the syrup bottle before the puddle on Tony’s plate turned into a lake. 

Bucky passed the plate of warm pancakes to Clint and Natasha and signed, _Help yourself._ They each slid two pancakes off of the plate and nibbled at them, not bothering with butter or syrup. He set the plate down within arm’s reach and slid two pieces of bacon onto his own plate. 

_We’ll take you guys upstairs and show you around after dinner,_ Bucky said. _We’re going to turn the office into a bedroom, so you’ll have to spend a few nights on the couch. Is that okay?_

 _I’ll show you me and Bruce’s room!_ Tony signed, mouth full of pancake and fingers sticky. 

Bucky turned his attention back to Clint and Natasha. Clint signed a quick _ok,_ and Natasha gave another one of those tiny nods and then quickly averted her gaze, eyes darting all around the room. 

_You two can help pick stuff out. We need to go to the store tomorrow anyway to get some furniture, and you’re more than welcome to come, too,_ Steve said, opting for sim-com. 

_We can build a pillow fort in the living room tonight,_ Tony said. _Or we could get out sleeping bags and have a sleepover upstairs!_

Natasha’s eyes widened, and she scooched a little closer to the edge of the bench. She’d set her fork down and hunched in on herself, reaching down to grab Bruce’s weighted dog that she’d set carefully between her legs under the table. 

_Natasha?_ Bucky asked. _What’s wrong?_

Tony had stopped eating, and glanced over at Steve with a slightly panicked look on his face. 

Natasha shook her head and went to stand up, tucking the weight of the stuffed animal close to her chest. Clint caught her hand and gently tugged her back into her seat to lean against him. 

_Natasha, it’s okay to be upset, but you need to tell us what’s wrong so we can help make it better,_ Bucky said. _You can use words or you can sign, but it’s important to tell us when you’re upset so we can help you feel better._

Natasha shook her head, and Bucky responded with a gentle, _Yes, please._

It didn’t make him feel any better to know she was probably only telling him because she was afraid not to. 

_Boys and girls can’t sleep together, because boys don’t always follow the rules,_ she signed, hands small and eyes staring down at her lap. 

_But you’re gonna share a room with Clint,_ Tony pointed out. _And he’s a boy._

 _He’s my brother. It doesn’t count._ Then Natasha seemed to clam back up and shoved her hands under the table, like she was afraid to use them anymore. She was starting to look overwhelmed again. 

_Hey, okay,_ Bucky said. _Thank you for telling us. You guys don’t all have to share a room tonight, okay? Don’t worry- we’ll get the third bedroom set up this weekend and you and Clint will have a space of your own._

Bucky glanced up at Steve, who had set his face into a neutral, concerned therapist-style face, and Phil, who just looked confused. His ASL was pretty basic, so the speed at which signs were flying around the dinner table was probably a little much for him to comprehend. That was a big warning flag Natasha had just thrown up, and one they’d all have to discuss later. 

_We don’t have many rules,_ Steve added, _but the ones we do have are there to keep you safe. So, always be kind to each other, use your words or your hands when you’re upset, and ask permission before leaving the house, okay? We have chores we all help out with, too._

The kids both nodded, and then once everyone’s attention had returned to their plates, Natasha tugged a little on Clint’s sleeve. She angled her body towards him and signed, _You need to eat more so you don’t get sick._ Clint grumbled a little as he slid a slice of bacon onto his plate. 

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up and he looked over at Steve and Phil. Phil hadn’t seen what Natasha had signed, but Steve had, and the worry was evident on his face. _Ask Phil later,_ he signed while Natasha was facing away from him, not wanting her to know he’d ‘eavesdropped.’ 

Bruce had started humming again while he finished eating the strawberries off of his plate, and rocked a little bit in his chair. Clint glanced at his back and forth motions a few times until Tony explained, _He’s stimming. He has autism, so his brain’s wired a little differently than everyone else’s. The humming means he’s happy._ Then he nudged his brother with one shoulder, which interrupted the rhythm of his rocking but also made him giggle. 

_Oh, okay. That’s cool._ Clint nodded and speared a bite of pancake with his fork. _What’s stimming?_

 _Wanna tell him, bud?_ Steve asked Bruce. _You can, it’s okay._ Bruce blushed and shook his head, but pointed a finger at Steve. 

Clint ducked his head and leaned away from the table. _Wasn’t trying to be rude, I promise._

 _I know. It’s okay to ask questions. Stimming is a kind of way to self-regulate using repetitive body movements. It’s part of how some autistic people process the world and express themselves,_ Steve explained. 

Clint nodded. _That’s really neat._ He glanced back down the table at Bruce and smiled at him a little bit. _You sign really well._

Bruce didn’t respond, but grinned a little bit around his last bite of strawberry. 

As everyone finished up dinner, Bucky noted that while Natasha had been concerned that Clint wasn’t eating enough, she had only really eaten one pancake and picked at the other. Her little bowl of fruit sat untouched. 

Steve turned to Tony and Bruce as he got up to clear the table. _You guys wanna go play while we clean up and talk to Natasha and Clint for a little bit?_

Tony nodded eagerly, took Bruce’s hand, and pulled him out of the room towards the stairs. He popped his head back in the kitchen a second later and called out, “Phil- last week you said that the next time you came over, you’d help me with the motor for my K’Nex Ferris wheel!” 

“I’ll help you take a look at it in a few minutes, okay bud?” 

Tony nodded and took off back into the living room. 

“Phil, do you know anything about building K’Nex motors?” Steve asked, beginning to load the dishwasher. 

Phil chuckled. “Not a thing.” 

Natasha stayed in her seat at the kitchen table, preparing for ‘the talk’ she knew was coming. She wasn’t sure why, but she kept Bruce’s stuffed animal in her lap. It was heavy, and it smelled good, and that was nice, maybe. 

She kept glancing over to check on Clint out of the corner of her eye, and he kept doing the same to her. She could tell he was doing his best not to look nervous, but it made her feel better now to know that if he was shaking, it was not because his blood sugar was getting too low. She hated it when he didn’t feel good; it made her nervous. 

After a few minutes of banging dishes around in the kitchen and wiping syrup residue off of every available surface, Steve and Bucky returned to the table, along with Phil, who’d reemerged from the living room holding their case files. 

“We have a few things to talk about before I leave you guys here tonight, okay?” Phil asked. Bucky took a seat next to him, across from Clint and Natasha, and started interpreting. 

“First of all, Natasha, I think that until we figure out what’s going on, it’s best to file a no contact order against your biological father, for your safety alone, okay?”

Natasha shook her head and squeezed Bruce’s toy. Clint wrapped his arm around her and drew her in close to his side. He must have been nervous, too, because she could feel how sweaty his hands were. 

“Why not?” Phil asked, his voice gentle and quiet. 

Natasha just shook her head again. 

“Can you tell us why you don’t like that idea?” Steve asked from the head of the table. 

But that was just it. She couldn’t, because she’d been taught for so long to be quiet, to always be quiet and to keep her mouth shut because the truth was a dangerous thing, especially when it could get someone hurt or in trouble. She’d been forced to keep quiet because that was what was expected of little girls- that whatever happened they would never, ever tell because then much worse things would happen, things much worse than cuts or bruises. 

_Nobody can get to you here. We want to make sure it stays that way,_ Bucky added. His eyes were all crinkly around the edges and they confused Natasha because people could lie with their words but it was much harder to lie with your eyes. Right? 

“I know you don’t trust any of us right now, Natasha, and that’s okay because you don’t know us, and we haven’t earned that yet. But we are all here to make sure you’re safe and happy and healthy, and we need your help for that, too,” Phil said. Her file sat unopened on the table, which she found bizarre. Normally at this point in the conversation at least one person would have consulted her disciplinary record, or commented on how many placements she’d cycled through in the past few years. 

_Her dad is dangerous,_ Clint added. He released his hold on her so he could hold his hands up in everyone else’s line of sight. 

Natasha’s heart somehow seemed to stop and kick into overdrive simultaneously. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t will them away. She gasped a little and swiped at them with her hands. 

_She won’t tell you,_ Clint continued. _Not right now, because she’s too scared of him. But she told me at school today that her dad is dangerous, and please not to let him take her._

Phil nodded, like this information wasn’t surprising to him in the slightest. Natasha whipped her gaze around the table, and Bucky and Steve didn’t seem mad, either. But that didn’t mean anything. Maybe they’d only get angry once Phil left. 

But maybe they wouldn’t. 

Natasha wrapped her arms around Clint and pulled him into her, tight, as she tried to suck in oxygen around the tears she couldn’t control. He leaned against her, warm and heavy, and she realized it had taken her until that exact moment to realize that she did have one person who really, truly wasn’t going anywhere. 

He’d told because he was trying to protect her. 

Her big brother was just trying to keep her safe. 

“Natasha.” Steve’s voice was gentle, though it seemed upset, but not with her. “Breathe. Slowly. Squeeze Clint’s hand every time you breathe in, and let go when you breathe out. It’s okay; I promise.” 

She did, and Clint let her. He brushed away the curls that had stuck to her cheeks with tears and tilted her head up so she’d look at him. _Hey, we got this, remember?_

She nodded. 

Phil kept going, acting like he didn’t mind at all that Natasha had just fallen apart in front of him for at least the third time that day (she was honestly losing track), and that she needed someone else’s help to put herself back together. 

“I’m going to be taking over both of your cases. Garrett’s caseload is massive, and I think we can all agree that we’re all a little sick of him by now.” 

Clint laughed and raised his hand. _I know I am. His was the first face I saw when I got out of juvie._

Natasha giggled a little around the tears, then nodded into Clint’s shirt. Bucky and Steve both grinned.

 _You do such a good job with Bruce and Tony; we wouldn’t have it any other way,_ Bucky added, voicing as he signed for Phil. 

_You’re not gonna separate us, right?_ Clint asked, suddenly stiffening. Now he was the one squeezing her hand. 

“Absolutely not,” Phil said. Bucky’s facial expression mirrored Phil’s as he interpreted, and Clint sagged into the bench seat. “You two need each other, and there is no benefit whatsoever to be had from splitting you up from the one person you can finally trust.” 

Natasha wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. _Thank you,_ she signed, daring to peek out at the three adults sitting around the table.

“You’re welcome,” Steve smiled. “Look, we know you two have been through a lot, and we don’t expect you to be perfect, normal kids after that. It’s okay to struggle, but always know that you have people who will be here when you do, and won’t ever get mad at you for it.” 

Natasha shrank back into Clint. Adults liked to tell lies, to get kids to trust them before they did the kinds of things she wasn’t allowed to talk about. Kids liked to do that, too, when they wanted something from her. 

She wasn’t going to let people keep taking anymore. 

“Natasha, I know today has been a lot for anyone to handle. I need you to help me fill in a few more blanks, but we don’t have to do that now. I just wanted to make sure you had a safe place to stay. Can you and Clint maybe think about talking to someone about everything that’s happened to you guys? Someone who might help make those things easier to deal with?” Phil asked. 

Natasha didn’t even glance at anyone sitting around the table, just pulled out of Clint’s grip and then stumbled out of the kitchen and into the hallway bathroom Steve had pointed out to her earlier. 

She wished she had her box of crayons. 

She wished she could forget everything, that way everyone would stop expecting her to talk about it. 

She wished she could stop crying. 

She’d cried so much today. 

She realized she was still holding Bruce’s stuffed animal, so she laid down on the floor of the bathroom with her feet up on the toilet and laid the toy across her chest. She could breathe a little better, and the urge to scratch open the scars on the insides of her forearms was still there, but it took Natasha a moment to notice that it was an urge, not a need. 

When she came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Phil was nowhere to be found. Bucky must have seen her scanning the room for him, because he said, _He’s upstairs helping Tony with a robotics project._

 _Why?_ Natasha couldn’t help it- she was curious why a former foster kid seemed to care so much about a social worker. She couldn’t comprehend that. 

_I won’t tell you everything, because it’s not my story to tell, but Phil helped save Tony’s life. Bruce’s, too. They both kinda latched onto him afterwards._

_They’re not all bad?_ She’d never met a social worker who’d actually...cared, even a little bit. 

Bucky looked like he was going to cry all of a sudden. It made Natasha a little uncomfortable to see a grownup cry, but it wasn’t scary. 

_No, honey. They’re not all bad._

Clint walked into the living room next, followed by Steve. Both had armfuls of sheets and blankets and pillows. 

_Wanna get ready for bed, Nat?_ Clint asked, signs a little clumsy around the bundle of linens. 

God, yes. She was so tired. 

Bucky and Steve had left the hallway light on for them when they’d gone upstairs, so the living room wasn’t completely dark. 

Clint had helped her cover the couches with sheets, and then they’d built a nest of blankets and pillows on the sectional. 

Steve had said it was okay if she slept with Bruce’s stuffed animal. 

_Hey._ Natasha nudged Clint with her foot. He must have been starting to drift off, because he grunted a little bit before pulling his head up out of a pillow to look over at her. 

_Thanks for dealing with me today._ Her cheeks burned a little and she worried at the inside of her cheek. _I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess._

_I’m not._

_What? Why not?_

_Because we’re in this together. I told you._

_Oh. Okay._

A few minutes later, she nudged him again. He had definitely started to fall asleep that time. 

_Can I sleep with you? I don’t want to have nightmares tonight._

Clint didn’t respond, just rolled over onto his right side and opened the blanket to make room for her. 

When Bucky and Steve came downstairs a while later to check on them, they found the two kids curled up next to each other on the same section of couch. Brother and sister. 

They weren’t going anywhere, not if Bucky and Steve had anything to say about it. 

  
  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha explore the Barnes- Rogers house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! I decided to focus a little more on Clint for this chapter, so you guys could learn more about his past and also how he's feeling about everything that's been going on. I had fun exploring his point of view a bit more, and I hope you guys do, too!

When Clint woke up the next morning, Natasha was still curled up next to him on the couch. He pushed Bruce’s weighted stuffed animal off of his chest and back into Natasha’s arms. She tugged it closer to her in her sleep and burrowed her head into the pillow. She was never this relaxed when she was awake- always nervous and fidgety and springing on the balls of her feet like she was getting ready to run. She had nightmares a lot, so oftentimes she ran in her sleep, too- legs kicking and flailing and lungs heaving like she’d just finished a marathon. 

They’d both done a lot of running, and Clint was tired of it. He couldn’t trust Bucky and Steve, not yet anyway, but so far, they were better than Trickshot had been. 

He didn’t think he’d ever had anyone tell him to ‘help himself’ before. 

They were new and scary but at least they cared enough to communicate with him, and it was kinda neat getting to be around other kids who knew sign. 

But Nat was struggling. Clint didn’t think there were many times in his life that had scared him as bad as seeing Nat’s dad yesterday. Though it wasn’t the intimidating Russian man that had freaked him out so much- it was Nat’s reaction to him, and the thought that he might lose his sister. 

He wished it were still the middle of the night, so he could lay there and watch her sleep and convince himself she wasn’t going anywhere. He wouldn’t let anyone take her. She was right next to him. She was alive and warm (and heavy- his whole arm was tingling with pins and needles) and he wanted more time to just watch her be at peace. 

He wished the world had given Natasha more peace and less war. 

A shadow leaned over the back of the couch, and Clint startled, hard- he accidentally shoved Nat away from him as he instinctively scrambled backward toward the edge of the couch, away from the shadowy frame looming in the room’s low light. Natasha jumped awake as soon as Clint moved, though she’d landed on her feet and backed into the coffee table. 

Clint’s first thought wasn’t- ‘Who is this?’ or ‘Where am I?’, it was ‘Dad, no.’ 

Dad, no. Not again. Please. 

The room brightened by a few shades as someone switched on a few more lights, and only then did the shadowy figure morph into a recognizable one- Steve. Clint relaxed a little more when he realized that the man didn’t have a belt in his hand. 

Steve held up his hands and took a step back toward the door.  _ I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.  _

Clint nodded and forced himself to unknot the sweaty grip he had on his T-shirt up near his chest. Natasha untensed a little bit once she recognized Steve, but moved to sit stiffly on the edge of the sectional next to Clint. 

_ Sorry, guys. I was just coming down to start breakfast. Didn’t mean to wake you.  _ And then a moment later,  _ Did you sleep okay?  _

Clint nodded. He had, actually. 

Natasha finally caught her breath, and Clint leaned his shoulder against her gently, an ‘I’m here’ gesture they didn’t need words to explain. She leaned back into him, then reached down for her backpack, which she’d tucked within arm’s reach against the ottoman the previous night. She laid out her only change of clothes- a slightly darker pair of jeans with rips in the knees, a long-sleeved blue shirt, and the same hoodie from yesterday. 

Steve was wearing a T-shirt and sleep pants, hair rumpled and sticking up. It was probably the least threatening look Clint had ever seen on an adult.  _ You can hang around in pajamas for a little bit, if you want,  _ he said. _ It’s Saturday- the only thing we have to do today is go to Target for some bedroom furniture.  _

Natasha blushed and swept her clothes back into her bag, then tucked her feet up onto the couch and rested her chin on her knees. 

_ Clint, do you wanna show Natasha around upstairs? You can show her where your room will be.  _ Steve nodded towards the hallway stairs.  _ Tony and Bruce are awake, if you want to go into their room and play.  _

Clint felt Natasha’s eyes on him before he’d even had a second to process what Steve had just told him. 

Play? 

First thing in the morning? 

Hang on. 

Trickshot had made him earn everything- every meal, every article of clothing, every shower, every moment spent doing something other than training for performances. 

He wasn’t allowed to miss because then he wouldn’t get any of those things- meals and clothes and showers. 

One more arrow, one more target, one more bullseye. 

He learned not to miss. 

But he also learned how to shoplift, because he’d learned very early on that grownups didn’t always follow up on their promises, and he couldn’t hang all his hopes on a ‘maybe.’ 

One time he’d lifted a pocket-sized Iron Man action figure from a convenience store. He still had it, in the front pocket of his backpack. It was the only toy he’d really owned after his parents died. Barney had made fun of him when he’d stolen it, then gotten mad because that action figure could have been a packet of Ramen noodles or a protein bar or something other than an inedible lump of plastic. But Clint hadn’t minded going a little bit hungry that night. 

Just that once, it had been worth it. 

When Clint glanced up, Steve had disappeared into the kitchen. He looked over at Nat, still tucked up on the couch next to him, looking unsure. He rifled through his own backpack, and upon realizing that his hoodie hadn’t been washed in a week or two, decided that pajamas weren’t such a bad choice, after all. 

_ Wanna go upstairs?  _ he asked. Last night, Steve had shown him around a little bit when they went upstairs to get sheets and blankets and pillows. 

Speaking of which, the couch was a mess- a rumpled nest of linens and cushions. He’d never have been allowed to leave such a mess behind, not when he lived with his family or during his time at the circus. Most of the time he’d slept in a tent with Barney, though he’d spent a few nights on a pullout couch in Trickshot’s trailer. 

He still missed that muscle burn he’d felt every morning when he’d woken up after a day of shooting practice- draw, aim, breathe, release. 

Inhale, exhale. 

Bullseye, because sometimes his life had depended on it. 

But he wasn’t with the circus anymore. He was in another foster home in Brooklyn, this time with Nat. This one felt like it might be different, but then again, he’d stayed in one or two other foster homes that had felt ‘different,’ but he’d always found a way to ruin his chances with those families, too. 

Maybe this place would be a different kind of ‘different.’ 

Who was he kidding? Garrett had told him for years he’d been classified ‘delinquent and difficult to place’ for a reason. 

_ Clint?  _ Nat nudged him. He shook his head and turned to look at her. He must have spaced out, but the edges of his vision were sharper now and he could focus again. 

_ Let’s clean up, and then I’ll show you around upstairs.  _

Natasha nodded and started pulling blankets off the couch. She looked pretty ridiculous trying to fold them by herself, because all the sheets and blankets were at least twice as tall as she was. She continued to struggle and tangle herself in a fitted sheet before she let out a frustrated, huffy sigh and Clint burst out laughing. 

He couldn’t help it; it was like all the stress melted out of him and in that moment, he wasn’t worried about social workers or abusive fathers or angry Russian men. The only thing that mattered was his little sister standing in the middle of a stranger’s living room, knotted like an annoyed little pretzel. 

_ Little help, please?  _

_C’mere,_ he chuckled. He untwisted Nat from her blanket prison and then wrapped her in a hug, swaying a little bit in place. 

When they pulled apart, Natasha looked over at him with that all-knowing expression on her face- she could read Clint like a book ever since they’d met.  _ Are you okay?  _

He scrubbed at his face with calloused hands and sighed.  _ I don’t want to mess this up.  _

Nat glanced down at the floor and shuffled her feet.  _ If anyone’s going to mess this up for us, it’s me. I haven’t lived in a house like this in years, and I don’t know how to deal with myself, let alone other people.  _

_ But you’re working on it, yeah? We both are.  _

_ I don’t know how. People get too close and they all expect me to...be okay with that and I’m just- not.  _

_ You don’t have to be. You only have to do what you’re comfortable with.  _ Clint squeezed her hand. 

_ I’m way too much for these people to deal with.  _

Clint could tell she had so much more on her mind, but she’d closed the walls on him a little and he could tell that she was done, at least for now. She twisted her hands into her hair and pulled at her curls a little. That terrifyingly neutral expression was back, the one she’d worn as a permanent mask when they’d first met. 

_ Hey, stop.  _ Clint gently guided her hands back down to her sides.  _ You’re doing so good. You can always tell me about anything that’s bothering you, and you can stop when you want to, okay?  _

Nat just nodded, but her hands stayed at her sides, limp. It hadn’t taken Clint long to recognize that she retreated into her own head a little when she got overwhelmed, and sometimes it was best to let her feel safe in her fortress, but other times it was best to coax the princess down from her tower. 

_ Come on, I’ll show you where our bedroom will be.  _

The upstairs of the row house mirrored the ground floor- long and skinny, with rooms shooting off one side of a narrow hallway. 

_ There’s Tony and Bruce’s room.  _ Clint pointed out the room at the front of the house, sandwiched next to a bathroom, painted a light shade of blue. 

_ That’s Steve and Bucky’s room.  _ The door was shut, and both Clint and Natasha eased their way past, sliding socked feet along the carpet. Closets lined the wall to their left, and to the right was the current office/ playroom/ future bedroom (if Steve and Bucky decided to keep them around long enough). 

_ Come on.  _ Clint motioned for Natasha to follow him. He gently pushed open the door and slid inside. 

It was a decent-sized room, with knotted pinewood floors and walls painted a pale, buttery yellow. A heavy oak desk sat in front of a window that looked out into a little backyard lined with young oak trees. A corner of the room next to the desk was set up like a little play area, with a kids’ bookshelf and bins of toys and those foam puzzle pieces that you see on the floor of every kindergarten classroom. 

Natasha instantly gravitated towards the room’s bookshelves- both the adult and kid ones. She ran her fingers along the spines and traced the intricate swirling letters of some of the older leather-bound titles. 

_ Not all of them are in English,  _ she mused. 

Clint eyed the toy bin in the corner- a plastic tub of Transformers and action figures and model race cars and Lincoln Logs and a handful of others he’d never seen or heard of before. His tiny little Iron Man action figure paled in comparison to this collection. 

As daylight started to filter into the room, something shiny caught Clint’s eye. Sitting on a shelf above the desk was a polished glass shadow box filled with gleaming military medals. He recognized a few- a Medal of Honor, a Purple Heart, one that was maybe a Silver Star. A burial flag in a framed wooden case sat next to it. 

A shadow fell over the desk, and Clint spun around , heart in his throat, when he realized someone was standing in the doorway. Nat had frozen in place, holding a colorful volume with Cyrillic letters down the spine.

_ Hey, it’s okay. This will be your room soon; you’re allowed to explore.  _ Bucky stood half in the room, hair pulled up in a messy bun, still in a pair of flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His metal arm was tucked into the pocket of his lounge pants. 

He nodded at the case of medals.  _ Most of those are Steve’s, but some of mine are in there, too.  _

_ Wait, these are yours?  _ Clint suddenly felt an intense rush of awe. Of course these were Bucky and Steve’s, who else would they belong to? 

Bucky nodded, then walked over to the desk and picked up a framed photograph Clint hadn’t noticed earlier. Two boys grinned at the camera, arms slung around one another. One was a shrimpy, skinny little thing, and the other was at least twice his size, but with the same mischievous glint in his eye. 

_ Me and Steve met in the Army.  _

_ That’s Steve?  _ Clint’s eyes bugged out a little. 

_ He got...bigger.  _ Bucky laughed.  _ Not much has changed since then, honestly. He’s still the same little punk who always picks fights with the bigger guy. He earned that Medal of Honor because he was too stubborn to know when to back down from a fight. I’m kind of glad he never learned his lesson.  _

_ Who’s Purple Heart is that?  _ Clint asked, unsure if that was an okay question. 

Bucky was silent for a minute, just thinking and staring at the past laid out on the desk. Clint was starting to get nervous when Bucky finally responded.  _ It’s mine. But that’s a story for another day.  _ His smile turned sad for a minute, and Clint was worried he’d misstepped. Bucky had said he could explore, not bring up bad memories. 

Bucky must have seen the thought spiral on Clint’s face, because he quickly followed up with,  _ Hey, it’s fine. We all have things that are hard to talk about, but there’s nothing wrong with asking a question. If I don’t want to answer it, I’ll tell you, okay? Same applies to you two.  _

Clint nodded, and Bucky glanced over at Natasha, who still hadn’t moved since he’d walked in the room. 

_ Ah...Сказки Пушкина. Pushkin’s Fairy Tales. Have you read them before?  _

Natasha shook her head and quickly slid the book back into its place on the shelf. 

_ You can, if you’d like to.  _

But Natasha just shook her head, wrapped her arms around herself, and glanced down at the floor. 

Clint took a step towards her and away from Bucky, still unsure if they’d done anything wrong. He was starting to get nervous- sweaty hands, heartbeat fluttering- Nat was, too. Bucky must have noticed, because he stepped back out into the hallway and let them leave behind him. 

The two of them stood at the end of the hall and watched Bucky pad down towards Tony and Bruce’s room, stick his head in the doorway to wave ‘good morning’, and then disappear down the stairs. Natasha visibly relaxed next to him once Bucky had gone downstairs. 

_ I don’t think this will ever get easier,  _ she signed, then huffed and rubbed her hands over her eyes. Just as she’d said that, the door at the end of the hallway pushed open, and out came Tony in a pajama set covered in little printed robots. 

_ Wanna come see my room?  _ he asked, looking like he was trying very hard to reign in his energy levels, though he was still bouncing every so slightly on the balls of his feet. 

Clint glanced over at Natasha, who looked exhausted and a little overstimulated but nodded her head. That little nod made Clint sad. It was something he’d done (and seen Natasha do) a hundred times before- said ‘yes’ because it seemed like the right answer, not because he actually wanted to. 

Yes, he would shoplift their dinner that night. 

Yes, he would keep a secret. 

Yes, he promised he wouldn’t rat anyone out. 

But Tony didn’t know that, so he just beamed and led them back down the hallway towards his bedroom. He pushed the door open and left it that way, which Clint appreciated. He hated feeling boxed in anywhere. So did Nat. 

The first thing Clint noticed about Tony and Bruce’s bedroom was how bright it was. Sunlight streamed in from two towering windows, filtering lazily through sheer cream curtains that rippled in the gentle breeze coming from the ceiling fan. 

The boys’ rooms in Garrett’s group home had always seemed so dark- curtains heavy, wrapped in shadows, dust motes swirling in overhead patches of fluorescent light. But in this room, the light was natural and clean and drenched in sunny warmth. 

Tony brushed past Clint and pounced onto his twin bed. Bruce’s low platform bed was pushed against the wall opposite Tony’s. 

_ Who’s that on your blanket?  _ Clint asked, pointing at the cartoon robot plastered on Tony’s comforter, blanket, and pillow case. 

Tony looked at Clint like he’d committed some horrendous mortal sin.  _ You’ve never seen Wall-E?  _

Clint shook his head. 

_ Well that’s a problem we need to fix. Today. This morning, if possible. _

_ Okay.  _ Tony’s enthusiasm was kind of contagious. 

He pulled back the blankets to reveal circuit-board sheets- green and yellow and red and blue lines intersecting one another in complicated mechanical patterns. 

_ I got them for my birthday,  _ Tony said, blushing a little. 

Natasha had wandered over to Bruce’s side of the room, which featured an actual kid-sized tent set up in the corner at the foot of his bed, stuffed with pillows and soft toys and a gentle, color-changing light on the inside. Bruce poked his head out from the tent’s zippered door and offered a shy wave. 

_ That’s Bruce’s sensory tent,  _ Tony explained proudly.  _ I helped him set it up.  _

Natasha’s fingers trailed daintily over the outside of the tent, taking in the room- its gentle colors and warm light and bookshelves and toy box and massive beanbag cushion in between the two beds. 

_ Wanna see something cool?  _ Tony asked. Clint nodded, and was about to turn to ask Natasha, but Tony had already beat him to it, waving gently at her to get her attention.  _ Can I turn the lights out for just a second, to show you something really neat? If you don’t like it, you can stand by the light switch and turn them back on whenever you want.  _

Clint’s chest warmed. He’d never met another kid who’d ever bothered to attempt...compassion like that. Respect? Concern? Whatever it was, he liked it. 

He was scared to get used to it, though, because he’d seen enough of the world in his ten years to know that that was not something you came across often. 

Natasha thought about it for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip, then nodded and moved to take her place by the lightswitch. 

Tony grinned, then bounded across the room to close the blinds and draw the curtains shut, effectively blocking out most of the sunlight that had lit up the room just a moment before. 

_ Ready?  _ Tony asked. Bruce crawled out of his tent and plopped down on the fuzzy beanbag cushion, stretching his arms out and laying on his back.  _ Okay. Turn off the lights, Natasha.  _

Clint gasped. The room wasn’t completely dark, since the door was still mostly open, but several strings of Christmas lights Clint hadn’t noticed earlier bathed the room in calming starlight. They looped the perimeter of the room and then crisscrossed their way across the ceiling, each bulb sending its own tiny beam of shadow and light that bounced down onto the floor and danced across the walls. 

Natasha’s face was illuminated in a gentle, shimmery glow. Her eyes actually sparkled a little and her mouth gaped open a little, light switch long forgotten. 

Clint had only seen the princess truly free from her tower a few times, and every time, her joy was the most stunning kind of beautiful he’d ever witnessed in his life. 

Tony was beaming. Bruce had a soft, happy smile on his face, as he was enveloped in warm light and fuzziness. Clint was happy because for a moment, Natasha was at peace. 

Peace. 

What a concept. 

She’d told him once, after that night on the rooftop, that there was a lot of blood red in her past, and she wanted nothing more than to wipe it all clean. 

She deserved a fresh start. 

Didn’t they all? 

Clint tried to hold onto this moment, onto the memory of Tony’s laughing smile and Natasha’s awe as she walked around the room bathed in Christmas lights. 

For once her back was to the door and she hadn’t noticed.

Bruce sat up and started rocking gently in place and flapping his hands. 

_ Happy stims,  _ Tony clarified. 

_ Is this a real place?  _ Clint asked. 

_ What do you mean?  _

_ Foster homes don’t look like...this.  _ Clint gestured around them at the lights and the toys and the tent and the beds with their character sheet sets. He cringed a little, hoping Tony wouldn’t be mad. 

Tony’s face clouded with understanding. He nodded, then said,  _ Dad and Papa have always told us that their house is not a house, it’s home.  _

_ I’m not sure I’d recognize ‘home’ after everything.  _ Clint’s signs trailed off. He wished he knew what a home looked or felt like, but it had been so long, and he was terrified he wouldn’t recognize one if it slapped him in the face. 

_ You will, don’t worry.  _ Tony, Bruce, and Natasha’s heads all turned towards the door. Bruce clambered off the beanbag and took Tony’s hand.  _ Breakfast.  _

Clint nodded.  _ We’ll be down in a minute.  _

After they left the room and Clint was sure they’d gone downstairs, he turned to Natasha, who’d flipped the lights back on and pulled the curtains back open. 

When she turned around, he could see her eyes, glassy with tears Clint knew she was trying very hard not to let roll down her cheeks. 

_ I know it’s stupid to want something I can never have.  _ She was chewing at her lip again.  _ Shouldn’t get my hopes up.  _

_ Why not? Why not let yourself have hope?  _ Clint reached for her arm, slowly, so she’d have time to back away or shake her head if she didn’t want him to touch her. 

Natasha took a big step backward, until she bumped into Tony’s bedframe. The princess had retreated once again.  _ Because hope taught me to trust the wrong people, and it almost got me killed a few times.  _ She wrung her hands, then shook out the tension through her wrists. 

Clint couldn’t blame her- he’d been a kid in body, but not in brain. There hadn’t been time for it, not if he’d wanted to eat one night and wake up the next morning. He still hadn’t figured out how to shed that mentality, and he knew they’d both have to figure that out together, if they could ever relax and find a place safe enough to tear the tower walls down. 

_ C’mon, Tasha. Let’s go get some breakfast.  _

He opened his left arm to her, and she tucked herself into his side- a puzzle piece clicking into place, like they were two halves just meant to fit into the other. 

She stopped him just as they’d reached the top of the steps. 

_ I don’t want to ever feel that again. I want to leave that behind, but I’m scared it’s just gonna follow me everywhere.  _

_ Feel what again?  _ Clint asked. 

_ Afraid for my life.  _ She took a big breath and turned to face Clint.  _ I hope I don’t have to feel that again, but bad things happen when I hope.  _

_ I’m scared, too. I’m scared to want a family again. I hope I’ll find one, but I’m terrified. The last time I thought I’d found family I ended up in juvie.  _ Clint’s hands were shaking ever so slightly, but he didn’t care.  _ How about this? We can be afraid together, and we can hope together, but let’s forget about being scared to hope, okay? I’m scared, too, but can we try one more time, together?  _

_ I’ve already found part of my family,  _ Nat said. 

_ What do you mean?  _

_ You, stupid.  _ She nudged him with her shoulder, and he grinned. 

_ Come on, I’m starving.  _

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky take the kids to Target to pick out Clint and Natasha's bedroom furniture. Feelings happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends, and good morning (it's 7 am in my time zone; I wanted to post this chapter before heading to work)! Thank you so much for your support on this story! It really means a lot to me. 
> 
> I wanted to let you know that since I'm back in school again (I'm taking a summer semester at my college), I'm going to be updating once a week now, as opposed to every four days. So from here on out, updates will come every Friday! I will update more often if I'm able to, but I wanted to give myself a more manageable schedule with this story instead of trying to write 4,000 words every 4 days, work 3-4 days a week, AND balance schoolwork. Thank you all for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Eight! 
> 
> TWs/ content warnings for this chapter include sensory overload and discussion of sexual assault (nothing graphic; it's mentioned but not described).

Steve had made eggs and bacon and heated up leftover pancakes for breakfast. Army mess halls served a lot of the same things, so he’d gotten creative when it came to mealtimes when he and Bucky were overseas. His favorite frankenmeal they’d invented was the breakfast slider- pancake ‘bun,’ bacon and egg ‘burger,’ and syrup on the side for dunking. 

Tony had appreciated this creation very, very much. 

Bruce wasn’t a fan of sticky hands, so he preferred everything separate, its own little island on his plate. 

This was only the second meal him and Bucky had shared with Clint and Natasha, but the more Steve watched them eat, the more concerned he became. 

They both looked so...skittish- like they were nervous someone was going to take their plate away from them at any given time. Clint was always a shaky mess before meals, and he made a note to ask Phil if he’d ever had any issues with hypoglycemia. 

Natasha picked at her food, too busy watching everyone else at the table to be able to relax enough to eat her own meal. 

Steve wished he could wrap them both up in a hug, tell them nobody was ever going to hurt them again, and convince them that they were actually safe now, and not in danger of being hungry or hurt or abandoned ever again. 

But he wasn’t stupid. 

He’d fostered before. 

His words couldn’t convince them of that- only actions could. 

And time. 

And patience. 

After breakfast, Bucky helped him clear the dishes before sending the older kids off to get dressed and ready for the day. They needed to make a trip to Target and basically purchase a bedroom. 

Steve grabbed a Pediasure out of the fridge and poured it into Bruce’s spill-proof cup. 

“Here ya go, bud. You can drink this while I help Papa clean up, and then I’ll help you get ready to go, okay?” Steve handed Bruce the drink with the straw flipped open. The four year-old accepted it happily and started sucking up vanilla ‘milkshake.’ 

Bruce was so small when Steve and Bucky had first taken him in a little less than a year ago- far beyond a case of ‘he’s just small for his age.’ The kid had been so malnourished- ribs sticking out, eyes sunken in. They’d done nothing but feed him basically whatever he wanted for the past nine months (and then some), but the amount of time he hadn’t been getting enough nutrition combined with autism-related sensory issues meant he had quite a bit of catching up to do. 

“Do you want me to take the kids in the SUV and you can drive the truck? That way we can just bring everything home today and we don’t have to wait on delivery?” Bucky asked, throwing a dish towel over his shoulder and beginning to stack plates on the drying rack. 

It took Steve a second to process what Bucky had asked. He hummed, looked up from the sink with soapy hands, and said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea, actually.” 

“Actually? I deserve a little more credit than that.” Bucky gave him that grin- that thousand-watt smile he’d always had plastered on his face when he teased little- Steve in bootcamp. He’d fallen for that smile, hard. 

Bucky must have realized that Steve wasn’t entirely present in the conversation he was trying to have, because he leaned against him, flesh arm on the small of Steve’s back, and whispered, “Babe, what’s up? I can practically feel you thinking.” 

Steve shook his head. “I just can’t stop thinking about what Natasha said at dinner last night. Buck, she’s throwing up so many red flags and warning signs and-” 

“Hey, Therapist Steve, can I have my husband back for a minute?” Bucky tapped his arm, gently, with his metal hand. 

“I know, I know. I just- it’s so hard when there’s two kids in front of me hurting so bad.” He sighed. Bucky wrapped his arms fully around Steve’s middle and leaned his head on his shoulder. “I think there’s a real possibility Natasha’s been sexually assaulted in the past.” 

Bucky sucked in a breath but nodded into Steve’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s out of the question.” 

“And they both read like kids who have been very severely abused and neglected.” 

“We’ve encountered that before,” Bucky said softly. Steve felt him glance back at Bruce, who wasn’t paying them any mind at all- just sucking on his drink and absentmindedly kicking his feet in the air under the table. Steve knew Bucky was talking about Tony, too- that kid’s father had put him through hell before he’d died. “They’re safe now.” 

“I think there’s a lot we don’t know about those two, and that scares me. I can’t help if I don’t know what happened, but I don’t want to pressure them to talk before they’re ready. I just want to keep them safe and give them the chance to be happy, normal kids again.” Steve’s voice had gone all husky, and he did his best to clear his throat and swallow around the emotion, but it was pretty pointless. There was no point in hiding the fact that he was close to tears. Not from Bucky. 

“The waiting for them to trust and open up is the worst part, babe. You know that.” Bucky started rubbing circles on his back, and Steve leaned into it as some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. 

“I want to keep a close eye on them, Natasha in particular. Her mental health is...how should I put this...not good.” 

“I know. But they’re in good hands, babe. Three flesh hands and one metal one.” Bucky reached up and kissed the back of Steve’s neck so, so gently. “I know you’re worried. I am too. But all we can do is work with Phil and show the kids that they have nothing to be afraid of here. That might help, I’m just saying.” Bucky nudged Steve, and he glanced over at the table. Bruce had abandoned his empty cup and was currently crouched under the table, making shadow puppets in the sunlight streaming in through the sliding glass door. “And anyone who doesn’t like Tony is a sociopath.” 

Steve huffed out a laugh and turned around to face Bucky. “We can do this, right?” 

“Absolutely.” Bucky gave him that tiny little sure-of-himself smile, the one that could convince Steve of anything. 

They could do this. He knew these kids were in good hands. All they needed was a family, and this house was full to bursting with it. 

God, he wanted so badly not to mess this up. 

Bruce must have gotten bored of shadow puppets, because he brought his empty cup over, bumped it against Steve’s thigh, and signed  _ done.  _

“Great job, buddy!” Steve gushed, taking the cup and placing it in the dishwasher. Bruce tugged on the hem of Steve’s shirt and made grabby arms up at him. 

_ Want Daddy.  _ Bruce blushed and tucked his head in Steve’s neck as soon as he’d picked him up. 

Bucky kissed the top of Bruce’s head, curls still wild from sleep. “Thanks for telling us what you want, buddy. I’m really proud of you. Daddy can absolutely help you get dressed.” 

Steve gave Bucky a thumbs-up while Bruce was still hiding. It was pretty rare for their youngest to actually ask for something without fear of being punished, like his biological father had done for years. They’d come a long way in the past nine months- worked their way from refusing to interact with adults at all to answering ‘yes or no’ questions to making simple requests every now and then. 

Steve hugged Bruce a little tighter and felt his chest warm. Bucky did a tiny little victory dance that made Steve laugh. Bruce picked up his head and giggled a little. 

“Come on, bud, let’s go get ready.” Steve shifted Bruce onto his hip and glanced over at Bucky. “You comin’ upstairs, babe?” 

“Yeah, I’m not wearing my Christmas pj’s to Target.” 

Steve followed Bucky out of the kitchen and into the living room, where Clint and Natasha were seated on the floor digging clothes out of their backpacks. 

_ Do you guys have toothbrushes?  _ Bucky asked. 

Steve’s stomach dropped. How on earth had they forgotten to ask that last night? 

_ No.  _ Clint shook his head. 

_ We’ll get some at the store today. Do you want to give me your dirty clothes and we’ll wash them today?  _

Clint blushed, then looked down at his bag.  _ We’ve only got one change of clothes each, but sure.  _

Bucky, ever the trooper, didn’t look fazed in the slightest. Steve hoped that the guilt gnawing at the inside of his stomach wasn’t too visible on his face. 

_ There’s a hamper in the upstairs bathroom. You can leave them in there.  _

_ Thank you.  _ Clint nodded. Natasha just tugged at the sleeves of her hoodie, eyes on the floor. 

Bucky walked out into the hallway, toward the stairs. 

“Trip to the clothes department today?” Steve asked. 

“Oh, yeah,” Bucky said once they’d reached the top of the stairs. 

They’d been in Target for about half an hour and had already managed to pick out most of the bedroom furniture- two bed frames, mattresses, a nightstand, two dressers, and a lamp. Their group was now standing in the linens aisle, and Steve had said Clint and Natasha could pick out their own comforter, blankets, and sheets. 

There were so many choices and there were so many people in the store and the lights were bright and it was really loud and there was no reason for Bucky and Steve to spend money because she probably wasn’t going to get to stay very long and- 

Bruce had started a high-pitched whine, combined with short, angry flapping hand motions. 

“Hey, bud- want your headphones?” Steve asked. He bent down and Bruce barrelled into him, tucking his head into Steve’s chest with his hands over his ears. Bucky reached into his backpack and passed Steve a pair of blue noise-cancelling headphones. 

Bruce nodded into Steve’s chest. 

Tony reached out to rub Bruce’s back and glanced up.  _ Bruce gets overwhelmed sometimes when the world is too loud or too bright or too...much.  _

Me, too, Natasha thought. Me too, buddy. 

The world is a lot to deal with. 

_ Hey.  _ Clint grabbed her attention with a gentle touch to her forearm.  _ You good?  _

She shrugged. She really just wanted to pull up the hood on her sweatshirt, draw the strings tight, and pretend the world wasn’t there. She was fine with sleeping on the couch, really. They probably wouldn’t get to stay long, anyway. 

Her father had found her after all these years, and he wouldn’t leave without her. He was not a man to go down without a fight, and when he fought, he dragged everyone down with him. 

Like that night in Stalingrad. 

They’d all gone down, hard. 

And then she’d had to run. 

He wouldn’t leave without her. 

_ Nat.  _ Clint grabbed her hand and squeezed; the pressure helped pull her out of her own head. She’d been staring at a set of white sheets, and had to blink away the fuzzy stars that had clouded over her vision.

Bruce was now hanging onto Bucky’s metal arm, headphones over his ears, swaying back and forth. He looked happier. 

Clint, however, did not. 

_ You guys are allowed to pick out something you like,  _ Steve signed to the both of them. Clint just blushed a little and ran his hands through his already tousled hair. Natasha wrapped her arms around herself and kind of hunched over a little, hoping that maybe if she stood still enough, nobody would notice her and maybe she could just live the rest of her life as a chameleon. 

_ Why?  _ Clint asked. 

_ Why what?  _

_ Why let us pick out a bedroom like we’re going to stay in it for more than a few months?  _

Natasha knew Clint wanted a family more than anything, but he’d been in the American foster system longer than she had, and was used to being shuffled around like a commodity. Even before that, he’d travelled with the circus, and they never pitched their tents or parked their campers in any one spot longer than a week or two. 

They were both so used to running that they didn’t know how to slow down, let alone stop. They’d both grown used to taking what they needed because it had never been provided. They’d both grown used to waiting for the other shoe to drop, bracing themselves for the impact that was sure to come as soon as things maybe, possibly, started to look up for them. 

The expression on Steve’s face softened as he processed Clint’s question. He released his hold on the shopping cart and crouched down between Clint and Natasha so he wasn’t towering several feet above their heads. 

_ Because you guys are a part of our family now, and family members get their own bedrooms and blankets and sheet sets and clothes. We only make guests sleep on the couch.  _

Natasha’s gaze snapped up to meet Clint’s, both of them staring at one another over Steve’s shoulders. 

They most definitely didn’t need words to communicate, but they didn’t always need signs either. Clint looked dazed- a bit of a deer in headlights. 

Only guests sleep on the couch. 

In every foster home she’d ever been in, she’d always had a sleeper couch or a cot or an air mattress. Never an honest-to-god bedroom with a real bedframe and mattress and a door with hinges that actually closed. Never anything bigger than a drawer or storage bin to store her belongings in.

Then again, she’d never had enough belongings to take up more room than that. 

She’d had beds in group homes, sure, but any kid who’d ever spent any time in one knew that the name was misleading- there was nothing homey about a group home, where kids slept six or eight or twelve to a room and someone shone a flashlight in through the door every few hours to make sure they hadn’t killed each another in their sleep. 

She’d been a guest in every house she’d ever stayed in, including her own in Stalingrad. 

There was a big difference between a house and a home, and Natasha realized, very suddenly, that she was terrified to learn the difference. 

Clint wrapped his arms around her from behind and for once it didn’t make her jump. He swayed them back and forth; the rocking motion was kind of helping the anxious pit in her stomach but Steve was still looking up at them (patiently, but still- he was looking). 

_ That might be a scary thought, but I’ll keep saying it until it gets less scary, until you start to believe it.  _ The look Steve was giving them did make Natasha uncomfortable, but not the bad kind of uncomfortable. It was the kind of uncomfortable that knotted her stomach but also made it feel ever so slightly warm and fuzzy. Not the nauseous kind of fuzzy- the sort-of-maybe-possibly-beginning-to-feel-safe kind of fuzzy. 

That was a scary feeling, too. 

But maybe one she could learn to live with. 

Bucky was smiling at them, Bruce on his hip now. 

Tony waved at them from the end of the aisle.  _ Come pick stuff out! I can help!  _

Clint squeezed his shoulders together, enveloping Nat in gentle, steady pressure that brought her back down to earth a little bit.  _ Wanna go look?  _ he asked. 

Natasha nodded and took a deep breath, but refused to let go of Clint’s hand. Tony dragged Clint over to the boys’ section, gushing about a Star Wars sheet set he’d found. 

_ Look, there’s a matching Darth Vader pillow!  _ Tony tossed Clint a Darth Vader-shaped pillow that went with a Jedi Order comforter set. 

_ I’ve never seen Star Wars.  _ Clint shrugged.  _ Is this the bad guy?  _

Tony’s jaw actually dropped. He glanced back behind them and signed while yelling very loudly,  _ Papa! We need an emergency Star Wars marathon tonight! Clint’s never seen Star Wars!  _

_ An emergency, huh?  _ Bucky laughed. 

_ Yes! A very, very big emergency!  _

_ We’ll see,  _ Bucky said, adjusting Bruce in his arms. The kid had laid his head down on Bucky’s shoulder and looked like he was falling asleep. Bucky held a finger up to his lips, pointed to Bruce, and signed,  _ Voice off, please.  _

Tony gave Bucky a thumbs up, but didn’t stop bouncing in place. 

_ I like this one,  _ Clint said. He’d gravitated towards a simple black and grey striped comforter. 

_ That one doesn’t come with sheets, bud,  _ Steve pointed out.  _ You can pick some out separately.  _ Clint looked a little unsure, but Steve gave him a tiny nod, and Clint snatched a set of purple sheets off of the shelf and dumped them in the cart. 

_ It’s my favorite color,  _ he said, blushing. Boys in America weren’t supposed to like purple, Nat had been told, which she thought was stupid. Boys and girls can like any color they want to. 

_ Cool,  _ Tony said, not skipping a beat.  _ My favorite colors are red and gold.  _

_ Gold is a cool favorite color,  _ Clint replied. 

_ What’s your favorite color, Natasha?  _ Tony asked her. 

She wanted to say red; her and Yelena had always loved it. But blood was also red, and she couldn’t stand the color anymore, not after that night in Stalingrad. 

_ Pink,  _ she said instead. It was close enough without looking like the inside of a human being.  _ And blue.  _

_ Blue is one of Bruce’s favorite colors!  _ Tony said.  _ What about these?  _ He handed her a pink quilt, dotted with white star patches, and light blue sheets with little constellations printed on them.  _ I know you liked the stars in my room, so I thought maybe you’d like these.  _

Natasha held them for a moment and just stared. She’d never owned anything like this before, not without stealing it. She glanced back at Steve. Maybe this was a bad choice; maybe it wasn’t what he wanted her to pick. 

But Steve just smiled and asked,  _ Do you like that one?  _

She was scared to say so, but Clint squeezed her hand and she nodded. 

_ Perfect. Put it in the cart.  _

Steve and Bucky let Clint and Natasha pick out clothes, too- clothes that fit, clothes that came with actual honest-to-god tags on them and not color-coded thrift store stickers. 

Clint was now the proud owner of three new pairs of jeans that were long enough for his growing legs, a handful of T-shirts that hadn’t been pre-stretched-out, and two hoodies that didn’t have holes in the sleeves. 

He’d helped Natasha pick out some clothes, too, because she was a little too overwhelmed to pick between a cat-print shirt and one with flowers on it. 

But now they were back at Steve and Bucky’s house, Steve was putting together their bedroom furniture while Bucky made lunch. 

_ I’m so proud of you guys,  _ Bucky had said to them earlier, before he’d gone into the kitchen to assemble an army of grilled cheese sandwiches.  _ I know that was a lot, but you did awesome.  _

Clint had tried to hide his smile. 

Natasha had just glanced away, chewing at the string on her old hoodie. 

_ Natasha,  _ Bucky gently waved to get her attention,  _ what can I do to help make an outing like that easier for you next time?  _

_ I’m fine,  _ she’d signed quickly. Clint knew it was because any indication she’d been ‘not fine’ in the past had been a sign of weakness that got her hurt. 

He hated knowing that. 

_ I know. But I also know you got a little overwhelmed, and there are things we can try to help you feel more comfortable. How can I help?  _

He’d looked at them so patiently, sitting on the couch with his metal hand gently massaging the palm of his flesh one. 

Natasha had just shrugged.  _ Never been asked before.  _

_ That’s okay. Can I maybe make a few suggestions and you can try one if it sounds good to you? If not, you don’t have to pick any of them, okay?  _

Nod. 

_ Maybe next time you could try a pair of Bruce’s headphones? Or we could take a break halfway through? Or I could give you something to do with your hands? _

Natasha had signed,  _ headphones, maybe.  _

Bucky smiled.  _ It’s not easy to ask for help, and I give the two of you so much credit for being as strong as you are. But there’s never any shame in asking for help if you need it. I’m proud of you.  _

And then he’d gone to make grilled cheese, like this was a moment out a perfect family sitcom. 

It seemed too good to be true, like at any moment someone would jump out from behind a corner and explain the long, complicated practical joke. 

But Clint wanted to try to enjoy it. 

For the first time in his life, he had a sister by his side, and somebody was proud of him. 

He could get used to that. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha has a rough day. Steve and Bucky make it better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Thanks for staying patient with me as my summer schedule gets busier and busier! I still plan on updating every Friday and look forward to writing this story in my down time. 
> 
> I've created a Spotify playlist for this story that I listen to while I write. If anyone is interested in listening to it, I can post the link to it when I post Chapter Ten next week. If not, that's okay. Let me know :) 
> 
> Trigger warnings for this chapter include vague descriptions of sexual assault, as well as descriptions of child abuse and self-harm. Nothing is discussed in too much detail, but the self-harm especially is touched upon more in this chapter than in any previous ones. Please stay safe!

Bucky and Tony had helped them wrestle their new sheets onto their new mattresses, perched on new bed frames and covered in new blankets. 

Clint had never been in a room with so much new before. 

He was too nervous to touch anything for the first five minutes, but that anxiety wore off as soon as Steve had signed  _ goodnight,  _ flicked off the lights, and eased the door shut, leaving a crack just big enough for a thin stream of hallway light to spill into the room. 

His new sheets were so soft and at least for now, he could call them  **his** and god, that was such a powerful thing to give to a kid who hasn’t had anything of his own in years (save a juvie rap sheet). 

It didn’t take Natasha long to pad across the room and slip into his bed, her own untouched- quilt still tucked in at the corners, pillows fluffed against the headboard. Nat curled in on herself, pressing her back against his front and tugging his arm around her. As soon as he obliged, and tucked the blankets back around her, she sighed and burrowed deeper into the bed. 

When they’d first met, it had been seemingly a lifetime since either of them had received gentle, caring touch from another human being that didn’t end in pain. They’d since learned from each other that hands can be helping hands and not just hurting hands, that sometimes it’s okay to seek out another person instead of dealing with the hurt all by yourself. 

Natasha’s hands were warm and gentle and they gave the best hugs when he had nightmares. They’d wiped away tears and mopped up bloody noses and cooled his sweaty forehead that weekend he’d been sick and Garrett had refused to give him any Nyquil. 

And they never hurt him, ever. 

So he never minded when she crawled into bed with him and hogged the pillow. 

He never minded. 

He started awake a few hours later. Natasha was thrashing around in bed, and she’d accidentally whaled him in the shin. 

Clint crawled out the other side of the bed and flipped on the lights, flooding the room with warm light from the overhead ceiling fan. Natasha was a sweaty, tangled mess, and he could tell from her scrunched-up face and her mouth gaping open and shut and her heaving chest that she was screaming. 

Clint’s own chest tightened, heart pounding and anxiety beginning to close his throat up. What if Bucky or Steve woke up? Would they be mad? They’d definitely be mad if Natasha woke up Tony or Bruce. 

No, stop. 

Keep her safe.That’s the only important thing. He could deal with everything else later. 

He winced as a stray fist flew out and connected with the headboard. He couldn’t hear the impact, but he was sure it would leave a bruise. 

Keep her safe. 

Steve jumped awake a few seconds before Bucky. He could feel his husband shuffling up to a seated position, kicking his legs free of the blankets and scrabbling for his prosthetic. 

“Buck,” Steve whispered. 

Bucky didn’t respond, just swung his legs over the edge of the bed and started fumbling with the straps on his arm. 

“Buck,” Steve said a little louder. “Take a breath.” He cleared his throat, and that must have finally caught Bucky’s attention, because he turned around and forced himself to focus on Steve. 

“Hm?” 

“You with me?” 

Bucky paused for a moment, then nodded. Steve reached out and rubbed a hand up and down his husband’s back, waiting for his pulse to settle. 

“What woke you up?” Bucky asked, voice hoarse scratchy. He rubbed his flesh hand over his stump on the opposite shoulder. 

“Thought I heard something.” 

There it was again- a muffled little thump. And then the screaming started. 

Bucky jumped to his feet, prosthetic abandoned next to him on the bed. Steve found himself automatically heading for Tony and Bruce’s room, before he realized that the screams were definitely female, and were coming from the room at the other end of the hall that hadn’t been a bedroom until the previous day. 

Another thump sounded from Clint and Natasha’s room, and then the screaming stopped abruptly. Steve followed Bucky down the hall, careful to make plenty of noise so at least Natasha would hear them coming. Bucky eased the bedroom door open and they both walked into the room, leaving the door open behind them and both taking care not to block the kids’ only exit so they didn’t feel trapped. 

From the looks of things, Natasha had fallen out of bed, and that was what had finally woken her up. Steve’s heart ached when he saw her pressed up against the wall, shaking, sweaty shirt stuck to her body and one bruised hand winding through her hair and tugging at her curls. 

Natasha’s gaze kept darting between the two of them and Clint, who was sitting on the edge of his bed watching over her. Tony and Bruce’s bedroom door creaked open from the other end of the hallway, and a little voice called out, “Papa? What’s going on? Bruce is scared.” 

Steve glanced over at Bucky. “Go ahead, babe. I got this.” Bucky nodded and padded back down the hallway. 

Steve didn’t attempt to talk to Natasha yet. She was still in panic-mode, that I’m-not-sure-what’s-going-on-or-what’s-real-mode. He knew what that felt like, and it wasn’t something you could rationalize around; you just had to wait it out. 

_ Can I sit?  _ Steve asked Clint. 

He nodded, so Steve sat down on the edge of the bed, picking up a spare throw pillow to hold in his lap. 

_ I like the purple,  _ he signed to Clint, gesturing down at the bedsheets. 

_ Thanks,  _ Clint replied, face drawn and mouth thin as he returned his gaze to Natasha, who was still curled up against the wall, but shaking a little less violently. 

Steve glanced around the room, overlooking Clint’s blankets and pillows strewn all over the floor, and noticed Natasha’s bed- made up and neat and looking exactly the same as when Tony had helped him make it earlier. 

_ This happen a lot?  _ Steve asked. Clint glanced back at Steve, worrying at his lower lip.  _ It’s okay. Nightmares are a common occurrence in this house. We all have them.  _

_ All of you?  _

Steve nodded.  _ Me and Bucky fought in a couple wars. Tony and Bruce had rough starts to their childhoods, just like you guys. Nightmares are a natural response to that.  _

_ Oh.  _ And then, a moment later,  _ Yeah. They happen a lot.  _ Clint paused for a moment, then his face screwed up in a moment of panic as he rambled,  _ Please don’t be mad I know we woke up Tony and Bruce and I promise it won’t happen again, okay? I let Nat sleep with me because then she has less bad dreams but sometimes I can’t scare her monsters away and I’m sorry.  _

_ Hey, hey- I’m not mad, bud. I promise.  _ Steve hated how worried Clint looked.  _ Can I tell you something?  _

_ Sure _ . 

_ It’s not your job to scare Natasha’s monsters away. She has to work on that herself. There are definitely things you can do to help, but you’re not responsible for her having scary dreams, okay? Your job is to be her big brother and that’s it.  _

_ Okay. I can do that.  _

_ I know you can.  _

Clint nodded and scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands. He startled a little when Natasha tugged at his pajama pants. She looked better- she’d stopped crying and was breathing semi-normally again, her breath only hitching every now and again. 

Clint crawled off the bed and down onto the floor, opening his arms to allow Natasha to crawl in next to him. 

_ Want a blanket?  _ Steve asked, holding up a fuzzy blanket he’d dug out of the hallway closet for Clint. 

Clint nodded, and Natasha even dipped her head in acknowledgement, but as soon as Steve stood up to unfold the blanket and drape it over the kids’ shoulders, Natasha jumped and quickly signed,  _ Don’t touch.  _

She looked so scared and so tiny and so young- bags under her eyes like bruises, tears staining her cheeks, arms clutching her older brother. 

_ I won’t, I promise.  _ Steve waited for her to nod before he moved to drape the blanket across the two of them, handing the end to Clint so he could tuck the ends around their knees and wrap Natasha in a fuzzy little cocoon. Steve hoped the sensory input would help ground her and calm her down a little.  _ I get scared sometimes when people touch me after I’ve had a nightmare, too. _

Natasha tilted her head and buried herself in Clint’s neck, but kept her gaze forward, always watching Steve and the door. 

_ Do you wanna talk about your dream?  _

She quickly shook her head and shrunk back a little bit. 

_ You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just wanted to offer, and also tell you that sometimes talking about the past can help it affect us less in the present. Everyone has things they wish they could forget, and sometimes those memories make life really hard. But me and Bucky and Tony and Bruce are here to help you through that, okay? And we don’t care about either of you two any less because you struggle sometimes. Struggling is okay; it’s normal.  _

_ You’re not in trouble, Nat,  _ Clint said, nudging her side just a little. Natasha looked up at him in surprise, her breath stuttering a little in her chest as her attention snapped back up to Steve. 

_ Having a nightmare isn’t your fault. We don’t punish for things that aren’t your fault.  _ Steve gave the two kids a gentle smile. He hadn’t known them longer than a few days, but god, he cared so much already. 

_ Really?  _

_ Really really.  _

_ I still can’t tell you.  _

_ That’s okay,  _ Steve signed. 

At that, Natasha visibly deflated, as all the tension drained out of her and she sagged into Clint.  _ Tired,  _ she signed into Clint’s arm without picking her head up. 

Clint’s mouth twitched into a smile as he nudged Natasha up into a sitting position and then helped her stand, all without displacing the blanket from their shoulders. Talent. 

Clint shuffled Natasha back over to his bed, and Steve took that as his cue to leave.  _ Want me to turn the lights off?  _ he asked as Clint pulled his comforter up off the floor. 

_ I got it, thanks.  _

_ Goodnight.  _ Just as he’d reached the door he turned around and signed,  _ Hey, just so you both know, me and Bucky’s door is always open if you need us. Even if it’s 3 am. Sleep well.  _

Natasha did not sleep well for the rest of that night. She’d dozed fitfully against Clint, but her brain was stuck in survival mode- waking up every few minutes at every small noise to make sure that she was still safe. 

She should be used to it by now. 

She’d been in survival mode most of her life- since she was old enough to understand what her father did for a living, since that night in Stalingrad, since coming to America with Yelena, since her mother’s arrest, since she’d lived in more group homes than years she’d been alive. 

She should be used to it. 

But she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get used to always waiting for the other shoe to drop and what minimal sense of ‘safe’ she’d gathered to be ripped away from her. 

She hadn’t slept well, which meant she’d woken up an anxious mess, which meant focusing on school was nearly impossible. She nearly had a panic attack walking past the main office on her way to her classroom, terrified that her father would be waiting there for her again. 

Miss Potts tried all day to get her to participate, or at the very least engage, with class, but to no avail. Natasha’s brain was fixated on the past and her eyes on the door, waiting for the memories to materialize and put her on a plane back to Stalingrad. 

So when Miss Potts took her down to the guidance office during their free period, Natasha assumed she was in trouble. Or that trouble was there for her. 

“Hi, Natasha,” Phil said. They were in a different meeting room from Friday- this one had a play area in the corner and a smaller, less adult-looking table. Bucky wasn’t there this time; it was just Phil. Natasha’s file was sitting next to his elbow, but it once again remained closed. Phil was instead fiddling with a Rubix cube. 

“Go ahead and sit down, sweetie,” Miss Potts said as she closed the door behind them. She let Natasha have the seat closest to the door so she could face the other two people in the room. 

“How was your weekend?” Phil asked. 

Natasha didn’t reply, just shoved her hands further up in her hoodie sleeves and rolled the excess fabric between her fingers. She knew it was rude to ignore someone when they asked you a question, but there were so many things running through her brain- what Phil wanted from her, why she couldn’t have Clint here with her, when she could escape and bury herself in a blanket and try to forget the world existed- that she just wasn’t capable of producing an appropriate ‘how are you’ reply. 

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Phil continued rotating his Rubix cube, eyes lighting up as he occasionally snapped a block into its proper place. “You’ve been through a lot, and I want to understand your story so I can figure out how best to help you.” 

So that was what he wanted. He wanted an answer to the ‘what happened to you’ question. He wanted to know ‘what happened to her’ and why she was ‘like this.’ 

He wanted her to tell. 

She could never tell. 

“Your answers are safe here,” Miss Potts added, settling back in her chair. “Everyone in this room wants to help you.” 

Natasha just shook her head. 

“You don’t think everyone in this room wants to help you?” 

Another head shake. 

“Can you explain, honey?” 

_ Can’t tell. Already told you that.  _ Miss Potts began translating. 

Phil made a little ‘ah’ sound and leaned forward with his elbows on the armrests of his chair. “Who told you not to tell?” 

_ My father.  _

“Mr. Dreykov?” 

Nod. 

“Why did he tell you not to tell?” 

_ Because if I talk about all the times people got hurt I could get other people in big trouble. So I don’t tell.  _

“Natasha,” Phil cleared his throat and folded his hands on the table, Rubix cube abandoned for the moment. “I don’t have very many rules, but the most important one I do have is that if something happened, and somebody got hurt, it is  **very** important to tell. That’s not tattle-taling; that’s helping to keep someone safe. Especially if that person is yourself. Does that make sense?” 

Natasha’s eyes suddenly burned with tears and she wiped them away hastily before signing  _ no.  _

“What is confusing you?” Phil asked. She expected him to be mad by this point. Things never usually went well when she told an adult ‘no.’ But Phil wasn’t upset. Instead, he was...patient. 

Head shake to clear her thoughts. No, that was making things worse because now she realized she had a headache. 

“Natasha.” Miss Potts gently grasped her wrist and tugged her hand out of her hair, where she’d apparently been pulling hard at her roots. She switched over to ASL.  _ Sign, please. Show us your thoughts.  _

But she couldn’t. Because she was thinking about how for years she’d been told not to tell, not to tell, not to ever, ever tell, and here was the first person in her entire life who’d ever told her that it was, in fact, okay to tell. 

_ Please don’t let my father take me,  _ she managed.  _ Please.  _

“Are you afraid of him?” 

Nod. 

“Why?” 

Why? Nobody had ever asked her why, but it seemed so obvious to her. Why. 

Why? 

Because he’d used his hands to tell her he was upset. He’d used hands on her and Yelena and  Мама and sometimes things other than hands. And then there were everyone else’s hands, and everyone else’s bodies  **taking** from her whenever they were angry. 

She’d much rather get punched, honestly. 

She was so tired of all the taking. 

“Nat, honey? You still with us?” Miss Potts asked. She looked very much like she wanted to wrap her up in a giant hug, and Natasha very much appreciated the fact that she didn’t. The only hands that were allowed to touch her were hands she trusted, and right now those hands belonged to Clint and Clint alone. 

“Why?” Phil asked, his voice still even and quiet and patient. 

_ Because I’m tired of getting hurt.  _

And then she was crying because the memories were pushing into the front of her brain and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop them. 

Three year-old Natasha being backed into a corner. Throwing her hands up. 

Four year-old Natasha learning what Papa did for work, and why he always came home acting like a different person. 

“Natasha.” 

Five year-old Natasha being dressed up in pretty pink lace.  Мама crying as she braided her hair. Natasha crying as a man she didn’t know ripped off her dress and  **took** . 

Five year-old Natasha being passed around, from one set of hands to another. All the greedy hands. 

Five and a half year-old Natasha screaming as Papa beat a man to death in the living room, painting the room a thousand shades of red. 

“Natasha.” 

Five and a half year-old Natasha and Мама and Yelena running away from the Red Room, as fast as they could. Running away from Papa. 

Six year-old Natasha learning that running away from your past didn’t stop the bad things from happening.

More hands. 

“Natasha, honey- you’re safe here.” Miss Potts’ voice kept filtering through all the memories, and it was confusing but not entirely unwelcome, because it helped pull Natasha back into the conference room. In Brooklyn. In New York City. In America. 

Eight thousand kilometers away from Stalingrad. 

Right? 

“Natasha, I want you to listen very carefully.” Phil’s voice snapped her out of it a little bit, and she forced herself to look up at him through all the panic. “You are brave. You are strong. And I know you probably haven’t heard this very many times in your life, but you can do this. I believe in you. Miss Potts believes in you. And I know Clint does, too. I will keep you safe, and I can promise that your father will never, ever lay a hand on you ever again, okay?” 

Natasha nodded, but all she could think of was how badly her scars burned, and how badly she wanted to fix that, and silence the chaos in her brain. Digging her fingernails into her arm was not going to cut it this time. Not today. 

“I’m going to continue talking with Steve and Bucky, but I want you to keep thinking about maybe talking to someone about what happened, okay? I’m proud of you.” 

Then the bell rang for the end of the day, and Natasha had to auto-pilot back to Miss May’s room, grab her things, and then wait in the carpool line with Clint and Tony and eventually Bruce, once his preschool teacher had seen Tony and let Bruce escape the hoard of three and four year-olds. 

And then Natasha had to sit in the back of Bucky’s SUV and tune out conversations about ‘how was your day’ and ‘what did you learn today.’ Until they were finally back at Steve and Bucky’s house and she could grab a blanket from her and Clint’s bedroom and lock herself in the upstairs bathroom. 

Finally she could rip up her hoodie sleeves, and the noise in her brain crescendoed. The scars just sat there, jagged little lines that spelled out an ugly story on her skin. 

Papa had called her weak.

Мама had told her it ruined her pretty skin. 

Yelena hadn’t said anything. 

Garrett had called her pathetic. 

She dug her thumb into the scars, hard. She didn’t want more of them. Ever since she’d met Clint, she’d tried so hard to stop- in part because he made her feel like she needed it less and in part because she was scared of what he would think if he found out. 

So she bruised her arm instead of ripping it open, squeezed so tight because that was the only thing that would make the past fade away into the back of her brain, where it was supposed to stay but so often didn’t. 

It didn’t hurt after a while but the tears didn’t stop rolling down her face. 

Papa would be so angry if he ever found out she’d told. She hadn’t told Phil everything, but she’d said enough- enough to where he’d be able to put some dangerous puzzle pieces together. 

That was all her fault. 

Her nails had dug into her opposite arm so hard they’d left crescent-shaped red stains whenever she lifted her hand to ease the cramp in her palm. 

She was wrapped up in a blanket on the bathroom floor, cold tile biting through her jeans. She was crying and her arm ached and then the bathroom was filled with hallway light and Clint’s panicked face was standing in the doorway. 

_ Wait! No!  _ Clint turned on his heels and raced back down the hall, feet pounding down the stairs. 

And then Bucky was there, metal hand gripping the doorframe. 

He was going to send them away now. 

Look what she’d done. 

But instead he slid an ice pack onto her arm in place of her hand, and the shock of it took her breath away and finally,  **finally,** she was able to look up and actually see the world around her. 

Bucky wasn’t mad. At least, she didn’t think so. His face wasn’t mad. 

Clint wasn’t mad, either. He was crying. 

Then Steve was there, but he didn’t look mad, either. He just pulled Clint into a hug- wrapped his arms around him and rocked them back and forth while her brother cried into his shirt. After what seemed like forever but was probably only a few minutes, they disappeared down the hallway and into a bedroom. 

“Natasha,” Bucky whispered. He was now sitting on the floor across from her, leaning up against the bathtub. 

But she couldn’t say anything, not yet, because there was still so much noise in her head that any thought she tried to produce was drowned out immediately. 

Suddenly the room was dark and there was something heavy and warm (?) in her lap. 

Bruce’s weighted stuffed animal. 

“Bet you didn’t know that thing can go in the microwave, too.” Bucky smiled. “It’s one of Bruce’s favorite sensory items. Wouldn’t let go of it for the first month he was here.” He must have recognized the worry on Natasha’s face because he quickly added, “Don’t worry; he doesn’t mind sharing.” 

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes. Natasha wanted so badly to close her eyes and let the darkness swallow her up, so then she wouldn’t have to face the consequences of today. 

“Did you have a rough day?” 

God, she was so tired of lying. She was terrified to tell the truth, because all of her truths were so, so ugly, but she was far too tired to pretend she was fine right about now. 

So she nodded. 

“Thanks for telling me.” 

The headache that had been building since the end of the school day started blooming between her eyes, pounding in tune with her heartbeat right at each temple. Natasha buried her head in the palms of her hands and dug at her eyes. The movement caused the ice pack to slide off of her forearm, so she instead picked it up and flattened it against her forehead. 

_ I don’t feel good,  _ she signed. She glanced up after a few seconds, waiting to see if Bucky was going to be angry. 

Even if he was, she didn’t care. She was too tired to care. 

She didn’t want to care anymore. 

Couldn’t someone else do the caring instead, just this once? 

Instead of looking angry, Bucky’s eyes softened and he rested his hands on the tops of his thighs. 

_ Do you want to go lay down?  _

Natasha nodded, but made no move to get up.  _ Where’s Clint?  _

_ With Steve in our bedroom.  _

_ Is he in trouble?  _

_ No, of course not. And neither are you.  _

_ Oh.  _

Natasha struggled to untangle herself from the blanket, and was suddenly aware of how much her arm hurt and how badly her head was pounding and how truly, truly awful she felt. She tried to stand but ended up listing sideways instead, the overwhelming headache keeping her planted firmly on the bathroom floor. 

_ Can I help you?  _ Bucky asked, making no moves yet. 

She was too tired to do anything other than nod. However, she was surprised to find that she let Bucky untwist the fuzzy blanket from around her body and then gently tuck it back around her shoulders. 

She was even more surprised that when he held out his hands, she nodded, and let him scoop her up and carry her down the hall into the adults’ bedroom, her head tucked against the joint where flesh ended and a metal arm began. 

What shocked her the most was how she felt safe in his arms, how she felt like it was okay to cry in those arms, and how she was upset when those arms put her down in a king-sized bed. 

Clint rolled over and tugged Natasha close to him. His hands were always safe, but maybe there were some new ones. 

She didn’t complain when two new sets of safe hands ran fingers through her hair until she started to fall asleep and wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks, then signed goodnight and flicked off the lights. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha wakes up in the middle of the night. Steve and Bucky talk to her about trying therapy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! Thank you all for being so patient with my new posting schedule! I am doing my best to keep up with writing and life in general. It's been a struggle, since my health has been really poor recently (I'm chronically ill), but I'm doing my best. That's why today's update is a little short, but I think you guys will like it since it's kinda warm and sweet.
> 
> As requested, here it the link to 'The Lost and Found Kids' unofficial official playlist! I add songs to this playlist all the time as the story evolves, so the music list is always growing. Enjoy! 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6wh9Xxw7Ie0WyFEeOFnjLi?si=sxbnehFkR-mxF6ab_IO2GQ
> 
> Potential TWs for this chapter include discussions of self-harm and unhealthy coping mechanisms (nothing graphic).

When Natasha woke up, she had no idea what time it was. Or what day for that matter. 

She did not like that. 

She was in a bed she didn’t recognize, though that wasn’t entirely unusual in and of itself. She’d slept on dozens of pullout couches and air mattresses and cots and sleeping bags and floors. 

This bed had Clint in it, though, so that was good. 

It was dark outside, and streetlamps shone gently through pulled curtains. A digital alarm clock on the bedside table glowed ‘11:07’ in neon green numbers. 

Night, then. 

It must be night. 

Natasha slid out of bed, tucking the covers gently around her sleeping brother. He looked so peaceful curled against a fluffy pillow, knees pulled up to his chest. 

Something shiny glinted from atop the dresser as Natasha walked towards the door, muffling her footsteps in the thick carpet. 

Bucky’s arm. 

Ah. 

She was in Steve and Bucky’s room. 

Oh. 

She was in Steve and Bucky’s room because she’d lost her grip on reality earlier that evening, and there’d been people around to discover her ugly little secret. 

**Clint** had discovered her ugly little secret. 

Crap. 

Natasha pulled her sleeves down over her hands, fully intending to keep those scars hidden for the rest of her days. They were a weakness. They were ugly. 

They were a lot like her. 

That desperate, niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach was back- that ‘are they gonna be mad? Are they gonna kick me out?’ feeling. 

She had to know. She couldn’t wait until morning; she’d never sleep running through ‘what if’s’ in her head all night. 

Natasha slipped through the cracked bedroom door, eased it gently shut behind her, and tiptoed down the hallway and downstairs. 

Bucky and Steve were laying on the couch watching what looked like a World War II documentary. Steve had Bucky tucked against his front and was running his hand up and down Bucky’s stump, massaging it absentmindedly as Japan dropped a bomb on Pearl Harbor. 

Those were safe hands, right? 

Natasha hadn’t made a sound as she came downstairs (courtesy of years of practice sneaking past drunk men) but they both turned their heads as soon as she stepped into the doorway of the living room. 

“Natasha, you okay?” Bucky’s voice was soft and grumbly and half-asleep. He shifted his weight, pushed off the couch with his only arm, and turned to face her. Steve sat up behind Bucky, an afghan sliding off his shoulders. 

“What are you doing up?” Steve asked. 

She was in trouble, after all. Why had she thought she could get away with getting up out of bed? It was 11 pm. What was she doing? 

She took a step back towards the hallway, but Steve quickly held his hands up and signed, _It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. You’re allowed up at night if you need something._

If you need something. 

Did she need something?

Would she know if she did? 

_Um. I’m sorry…_ She trailed off, not knowing what else to add. 

What could she add? 

‘I’m sorry I’m a mess that you now have to deal with.’ 

‘I’m sorry I don’t know any other way to deal with my problems than by destroying myself.’ 

‘I’m sorry I can’t fix **me**.’ 

‘Fix me.’ 

What could she say? 

“Why are you sorry?” Bucky asked. He normally signed with her, but being sans left arm at the moment probably made that a bit complicated. His fingers twitched on the couch cushion, though, like they couldn’t possibly stand to be so still during a conversation. 

There were far too many thoughts in Natasha’s head for any one of them to be considered coherent. 

“You don’t have to be, you know,” Steve said. “Can I tell you something? You don’t have to say anything, just listen.” 

Nod. 

“Do you know what I do for a living?” 

She did, sort of, but not really. 

“I help people like you. People who’ve had bad things happen to them, who need help healing after all the bad things.” Steve just sat on the couch, hands folded in front of him. Waiting. Letting her digest the information. 

_How do you help?_

Steve switched back to ASL as he continued. _A lot of talking. Art, too. Drawing, painting, sculpting. Working through all the bad things helps the memories stay memories. It’s not easy, but neither is going through trauma._

_Is that what I have? Trauma?_

Steve’s face softened, while Bucky’s just looked sad. Both of them nodded. 

_So do I,_ Steve signed. 

“Me too.” Bucky scooched away from Steve and reached his hand up to absentmindedly rub at his shoulder stump. “A lot of people go through really hard things, but the aftermath of the trauma- nightmares and self-harm and not trusting- those things don’t make them any less deserving of help.” 

Why was she crying? 

“C’mere.” Bucky beckoned her over to the couch. It wasn’t until Natasha sat down next to him (still closest to the door) that she realized how stiffly she’d been standing- so rigid her muscles were shaking and spasming although that also could have been the crying. 

Bucky didn’t touch her, just sat next to her. He left his palm open, face up, on the couch cushion. Steve leaned against him from the other side, wrapping his arms around his middle and leaning his head on Bucky’s flesh shoulder. 

_Something I’ve learned in my line of work is that bad things happen to good people all the time. Far more often than they should, in fact. But that doesn’t make the good people any less good._ Steve signed, still draped over Bucky, with his hands right in front of Bucky’s chest. It looked kind of silly, but it worked. 

But she wasn’t good. 

She’d done so much bad. 

She’d let people do things that deep down, she knew they weren’t supposed to do to little girls, no matter what Papa had said to her. 

She’d run away when things had gotten too tough and scary to deal with. 

She hadn’t stopped running since. 

Not since she’d had her passport stamped by the man in Customs. 

Not since her mother had been arrested. 

Not since one boy in her first group home hadn’t followed the rules about boys and girls and she’d had to keep running. 

And run away from Yelena. 

“Дышать.” Breathe. 

Natasha glanced up, sweatshirt sleeves still gripped tightly in her palms. She’d never heard Russian used that gently before. She’d thought the language was much like the people she’d known in Stalingrad- rough and angry and loud. 

Maybe she was wrong. 

“Я скажу тебе это, пока ты не поверишь. Вы в безопасности здесь.” I will tell you this until you believe it. You are safe here. 

_I don’t._

“You don’t believe it yet?” Bucky asked. 

Natasha shook her head. _The past always catches up eventually. It always finds me._

“We’re not sending you back to your dad. He can’t hurt you anymore,” Bucky said. “We have no intentions of sending you or Clint anywhere.” 

_I don’t deserve that._

_Why not?_ Steve asked. _Kids don’t have to deserve love or safety or a roof over their heads. Those things are needs; you can’t ‘deserve’ or ‘not deserve’ to be loved._ He paused, then asked again, _Why don’t you think you deserve those things?_

Why didn’t she deserve that? 

Because there would always be people chasing her. 

Because she’d done things most seven year-old girls don’t even know about yet.

Because she was too scared to use her words like all the other kids her age. 

Because she didn’t even know how to be a ‘kid her age.’ 

Natasha shook her head. She didn’t have an answer for that. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened earlier?” Bucky asked. “You don’t have to go into detail, but we need to make sure you can stay safe, okay? That’s very important.” 

_I self-destruct when I’m scared._ Natasha pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and tried to remember how to breathe. 

“I know.” Bucky hummed. “Before we get any further, do you need an ice pack or a bandaid or anything?” 

_No thank you._

“Okay.” 

Steve let out a breath, drawn out and slow. He switched back to voice and asked, “We’re not going to punish you for this, okay? We’re just worried because we care. I know Phil has asked you about this before, but now that you know a little bit more about it, do you maybe want to try talking to someone? A therapist who can help you?” 

_Can’t._

“Can’t what?” 

_Talk._

Steve’s eyes widened ever so slightly, then he quickly added, “No, no, that’s not what I meant. Of course you can sign. Nobody will force you to talk or ‘use your words’- not if you’re not comfortable or able to do so.” 

_You don’t mind?_

_Why would I mind?_ Steve bounced back to sign language. _ASL is awesome. Gives me a chance to practice to, though I don’t think I’ll ever catch up to you or Clint or Mr. Interpreter over here._ Steve crossed his eyes while making the AGENT sign and pointing to Bucky. 

Bucky grinned and waved at Steve, blushing ever so slightly. 

“We will never punish you for using sign language. Bruce uses it, since he’s mostly nonverbal. Tony does just for fun, and because he likes hanging out with you and Clint,” Bucky said. 

Steve nodded, then added, “We’ll never punish you for using healthy coping mechanisms, either. Self-harm isn’t a healthy one, but we’ll help you find some others that work for you.” 

“Do you like Bruce’s stuffed animal?” Bucky asked. “You seem to like the sensory input. Does it help you calm down?” 

_What do you mean?_

“Sensory input is like...the way things feel or taste or smell or sound like. Bruce has autism, so the way he sees the world is different because his brain has different sensory needs. But anybody can benefit from things like weighted blankets or stim toys,” Bucky explained. 

Natasha expected both Steve and Bucky to look fed up at this point, or annoyed with her, but neither did. They just sat patiently, Steve still leaning on Bucky and Bucky soaking up the hug with a smile on his face. 

_Yeah. I like Bruce’s toy. He can have it back, though. I don’t need it._

“You can have your own, Natasha. If sensory items can be a way to help you cope and center yourself when you’re having a hard time, that’s perfectly okay. Nobody in this house will judge you for that.” 

“Wanna help us pick some out for you tomorrow after school? We can get on the computer and do a little shopping,” Steve said. 

_You don’t have to._

“We know. But we care, and we want to. Clint can pick some toys out, too.” 

_Okay._ Natasha blushed, then realized for the first time that day that her tummy actually felt a little warm, not tight and knotted and sick like it had for what felt like an eternity. 

“What do you think about finding someone to talk to, too?” Steve asked. 

_If I don’t like it, can I stop?_

“Of course.” 

Natasha didn’t think anyone had ever told her that before. She’d never really had permission to say ‘no,’ not even to things that hurt her. 

Especially not to things that hurt her. 

_Okay._

“Я горжусь тобой,” Bucky said. I’m proud of you.

He flexed his hand on the couch cushion and scooted it over to hers in invitation. 

Had she ever held someone’s hand like that- with no strings attached save for compassion? She didn’t think so, but it felt nice- warm and secure and grounding and safe. 

Safe. 

What a concept. 

She wouldn’t- couldn’t- allow herself to get used to it, because all the bad things happened when she let her guard down. But she could enjoy it a little bit, right? 

“Do you feel okay enough to go back up to bed?” Steve asked. “If not, you’re more than welcome to stay down here for a while longer, so long as you don’t mind watching whatever this is.” He gestured at the TV. “Buck, what are we watching now? I stopped paying attention after the Pearl Harbor documentary ended.” 

Bucky clicked the channel guide on. “A miniseries on the Strategic Scientific Reserve.” 

Steve must have seen the unimpressed look on Natasha’s face, because he laughed a little and then asked, “Want me to tuck you in?” 

_No thanks. I’m okay._

“Hang on- I have something for you before you go back upstairs.” Bucky stood up from the couch, steadied himself with his one arm on Steve’s shoulder, and walked off into the kitchen. A minute or so later, the microwave beeped and he returned to the living room with the stuffed dog in his hand. “Thought you might like to take this to bed.” 

Natasha hugged the dog to her chest, wrapping its warm legs around her ribs and holding most of its weight to her stomach. _Thanks._

As soon as she crawled back into Bucky and Steve’s bed and tucked herself against Clint, he curled around her and the warm stuffed animal. He buried his face in her shoulder and sighed before settling back down. 

She slept really well that night. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil has some bad news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update is so late in the day, friends. I had a long day at work and my tired brain forgot to post this chapter until right before I went to bed. Sorry, guys. I hope you enjoy and thank you so much for your continued support.

Bucky had just set Bruce’s plate of French toast sticks down on the table when the doorbell rang. 

“I’ll get it,” Steve called from the top of the stairs. And then a moment later, “Morning, Phil. Want some coffee to go?” 

“You read my mind.” 

On days Phil needed Bucky for the entire day, they often carpooled for convenience’s sake. Parking anywhere in the city was often a nightmare, so having one car as opposed to two made life a lot easier. 

Steve led Phil into the kitchen and straight to the coffee pot. 

“Hi, Phil!” Tony called, mouth full of Rice Krispies and blueberry. 

“Hey, bud. How you doing today?” Tony gave Phil a big thumbs up with the hand that wasn’t shovelling cereal into his mouth. Even Bruce gave Phil a tiny wave, which immediately warmed Bucky’s heart. 

“Almost ready to go, Buck?” 

Bucky nodded and adjusted the collar of his shirt. “Where are we heading today?” 

Phil pulled out his SHIELD-issue phone and scrolled through a detailed calendar. “A school in Brooklyn, a foster home in Queens, another group home in Lower Manhattan, and a home visit in East Village. Uh, better make that two cups of coffee, Steve.” 

“You got it.” Steve pulled another travel mug out of the cabinet and filled it with blessed caffeine. 

“Can I talk to you two before we take off?” 

“Yeah, let’s go in the living room.” Bucky turned to the table, waited until he had the kid’s attention, and signed,  _ Anyone need anything? We’ll be just out in the living room with Phil.  _

Bruce and Tony both signed  _ no _ . Natasha stared at her toast, chewing, with a blank look on her face before gently shaking her head. Clint blushed and asked,  _ Can I have a little more cereal?  _

Clint had yet to ask for more of anything. He always cleared his plate, but never served himself much, and Bucky and Steve had been trying to encourage both him and Natasha to eat more since they’d moved in.  _ Of course, bud. Do you need any help?  _

_ No, thanks. I got it.  _

_ Okay. I’m proud of you for asking. _

Bucky then joined Steve and Phil in the living room and sat down on the couch, feet up on the ottoman. 

Phil glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen before turning back to Steve and Bucky. “Natasha’s biological father is suing the state of New York for custody.” 

Steve sucked in a breath and wrung his hands, squeezing nervously. 

Bucky muttered a quiet, “Fuck.” 

He knew Steve must be upset because he didn’t even glare at him or whisper ‘language’ and point at the swear jar. 

“What does that mean?” Steve whispered. 

“Well for starters it doesn’t impact her foster care at all. She has an incredible family to stay with. Plus I have more than enough reason to believe that there would be a serious threat to her physical safety if she were to be returned to Dreykov’s custody.” Phil looked as worried as Bucky and Steve, and Bucky noticed the bags under his eyes for the first time that morning. 

“He can’t...her fath-Dreykov  **can’t** ,” Bucky choked out, words catching at the back of his throat. “He abused that girl for years- scared her into submission. He’s done nothing to deserve her. Like hell I’m gonna let her take him.” 

Bucky wasn’t even aware that his voice had crescendoed throughout the conversation, not until Steve’s gaze snapped up and fixated on a spot behind Bucky’s shoulder. 

A plate slid off a placemat, smashed onto the floor. 

A chair scraped away from its spot at the table. 

One very scared little girl stood in the doorway to the living room, one hand over her mouth and the other pulling at her hair. 

Shit. 

“Natasha, take a breath. We can all talk about this and Phil will explain to you what’s going on.” Steve beckoned her over to the couch, but she didn’t move. 

She just stood rooted in place, shaking. 

Clint came up next to her, cereal abandoned. He glanced at his sister, eyebrows drawn together. He reached a hand out, slowly and carefully, but stopped when Natasha shook her head and flinched away from him. 

Clint glanced over at Steve and Bucky, confused and worried.  _ What’s wrong?  _ he signed. 

_ We got some news about Natasha’s case,  _ Bucky responded, then shifted his gaze to Natasha, who was quickly spiralling into a panic attack. “ Мы не позволим ему забрать тебя. У Дрейкова нет никаких юридических дел.” 

We will not let him take you. Dreykov has no legal case. 

Bucky made sure to keep his voice steady and even, to keep his Russian smooth and comforting, not harsh and grating. 

“Обещаю. Ты и Клинт никуда не денешься.” 

I promise. You and Clint aren’t going anywhere. 

“Иди сюда, моя милая девушка. Мы поможем вам через это. Я не нарушаю обещаний.” 

Come here, my sweet girl. We will help you through this. I don’t break promises. 

When that got no response, Bucky shifted so Natasha would be able to see his hands over the back of the couch.  _ You.  _ He signed slowly, pointing to Natasha with his index finger.  _ Safe.  _ He made two s shapes with his hands, crossed them in front of him, and then gently uncrossed them.  _ Here.  _ Bucky placed his hands, palm up, in front of him and made little circles in the air. 

You are safe here. 

Steve kept sending him worried glances out the corner of his eye as Natasha cried and her chest heaved for oxygen and she tugged at her hair. Her other hand had moved from her chest to the side of her head, digging her nails into the skin at her temple. 

“Natasha, you’re going to hurt yourself. Remember what we talked about? About trying ways to deal with big feelings in ways that aren’t dangerous?” Steve’s voice was gentle and Bucky highly suspected that the reason Natasha finally focused her gaze on him for a second was due to the fact that Steve had asked, not  **told** . 

Clint did something Bucky wouldn’t have recommended in that situation- he wrapped his arms around Natasha from behind, tugged her hands out of her hair, and held them loosely at her sides. Bucky fully expected her to jump away from him or flinch or elbow him in the jaw, but she didn’t- she flopped against him, letting him take her weight as she gripped his hand and cried. 

“It’s okay, Bruce. Natasha is just upset right now,” Tony whispered. 

Bucky glanced past Clint and Natasha to their other two kids, still at the breakfast table. Bruce was chewing on his fingers, his rocking taking on a frantic and uneven pace. 

“Okay, buddy. I’m comin’.” Bucky stood up slowly and made sure Clint saw him coming towards the kitchen so he could shuffle Natasha out of the way. Bucky picked up his youngest son and tucked him to his chest, squeezing across his middle and back with steady pressure. Bruce whined and bumped his head against Bucky’s collarbone. 

“Hey, little dude. Let’s go upstairs, okay?” Bucky tapped Clint on his way past and signed  _ Come upstairs with me?  _

Clint nodded and started to walk Natasha behind him, using his shoulders to guide her through the living room, down the hallway, and up the stairs to Tony and Bruce’s room. 

Once inside, Bucky flipped off the lights and pulled open the flap to Bruce’s tent. He crawled inside, set Bruce down between his legs, and patted the spot next to him on the floor. Clint mirrored his position, with Natasha leaning against his chest. Bucky pulled Bruce’s purple weighted blanket over all of them and leaned against the wall. 

He started humming Bruce’s favorite song, gently drumming the melody along his back with his flesh hand. 

After about twenty minutes, both Bruce and Natasha had calmed down. Clint had discovered the remote for the fairy lights, and was gently flicking through the color settings. 

Natasha finally peeked out from Clint’s arms and signed  _ sorry,  _ then immediately drew away, likely afraid of being punished. 

Panic attacks were never something you punished. 

Bucky should know. When he’d first been rescued from HYDRA, after being held for several years as a military POW, he’d had them every day. 

But Steve had never given up on him. 

And he refused to give up on his daughter.

_ Don’t be sorry. It’s okay to be scared. That was scary news you just found out. I’m sorry you overheard it.  _

Clint tapped Natasha’s shoulder, then tilted her face up to look him in the eye. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and said,  _ Nobody’s gonna give up on you, Nat.  _

Bruce sat up a little, tangle toy in his hands, and poked Natasha to get her attention. Bucky expected her to jump or recoil, but she didn’t. She gave him a tiny smile and raised her eyebrows ever so slightly-  _ yes?  _

_ You can share my tent. I like to come in here when I’m upset. You can, too.  _

_ You’re an awesome sharer, bud.  _ Bucky kissed the top of his youngest son’s head- burying his face in curls that smelled like vanilla shampoo. 

_ I like it in here,  _ Natasha signed, running one hand along the side of the tent. 

_ Me too. It feels safe.  _

Natasha turned her gaze back to Bucky and signed, gaze at the floor.  _ I don’t want to go to school today.  _

_ Why not?  _

_ What if he comes back? I can’t...I can’t.  _

_ Breathe. Let me talk to Steve. I have to go to work today, but I might be able to stay home with you for a little bit and take you into school later, okay?  _

A few minutes later, Bucky slipped out of the tent and went back downstairs, where Tony was finishing an English worksheet he’d gotten stuck on the previous night and packing his and Bruce’s backpacks. 

“Are Brucie and Natasha okay?” he asked, glancing up from a copy of ‘Charlotte’s Web.’ 

“Yeah, Tony. Everyone’s okay.” 

His boy smiled and returned to his homework. 

God, Bucky was so lucky. 

“Hey, Phil?” Bucky asked as he walked back into the kitchen and took a seat at the breakfast bar, where Steve was doing dishes and Phil was munching on some toast. “Any chance you can do without me for our first couple hours?” 

“Everyone alright?” Phil asked. Steve set down the sponge and flung his dish towel over his shoulder. 

“Yeah, but Natasha is terrified her father is going to show up at school and I don’t see things going well if we send her to class while she’s this upset. Steve, is it okay with you if I take her in late?” 

“Of course, Buck. That’s probably better than her not going at all. She needs to learn to feel safe, but we don’t want to push her too far too fast.” 

“I can swing by and pick you up on my way to Queens. But I blame you if I get made fun of for my Spanish again.” 

“Fair enough. Thanks.” 

“No problem. You do have twice as many kids now as you did a few weeks ago.” 

“That’s a fair point. I’m gonna have to pull that card more often.” Bucky laughed and Phil cracked that huge smile of his and clapped him on the back as he swiped his allotted travel mug off the counter and headed towards the front door. “I’ll probably be heading back this way around 10. Sound good?” 

“Perfect.” 

“Thanks, Phil,” Steve called. He let out a breath once the door closed behind him and turned back to Bucky, who immediately leaned into the hug his husband offered. 

“What are we gonna do, Stevie?” Bucky’s breath hitched a little, the overwhelmingness of the situation crashing down on top of him a little bit now that the kids weren’t watching. He clenched a fist and counted backwards by threes in his head to distract himself from the anxiety blooming in his chest. 

“Hey, okay. Okay,” Steve whispered. He unknotted Bucky’s hand, interlaced their fingers, and swayed in place, rocking the two of them back and forth. “In and out, nice and slow.” 

Bucky nodded against Steve’s chest, warm and reassuring, heart beating steadily against his ear. 

He knew what Natasha felt every time she dissolved in front of them. He knew. 

“Tell me five things you can see,” Steve whispered. That may have been a card out Therapist Steve’s deck, but this was most certainly Husband Steve helping Bucky through his own panic attack- sweet and gentle and ever so patient. 

Bucky was reminded, not for the first time that day, of how lucky he was. 

“Uh, dishes. Orange juice. Napkins. Syrup puddle. Blueberries on the floor.” 

“Oops, must have missed those.” Steve’s laugh was warm and rumbly and it did more to calm Bucky down than any mindfulness exercise ever could. They helped, sure, but they weren’t nearly as effective as having your lover, your best friend, your idiot, your hero hugging you. 

“Four things you can feel. C’mon, Buck.” 

“Floor. Socks. Your shirt. These goddamn cufflinks.” 

“Three things you can hear.” 

“Dishwasher. AC. Tony doing...something.” 

“Good job, babe.” Steve ran his hands, warm and strong, up and down the length of Bucky’s back. During particularly bad attacks, they’d keep going. Sometimes they’d have to do the whole exercise three times over. But today hadn’t been a bad one. It had just been...overwhelming. 

Bucky pulled away from Steve’s arms to look him in the eye and repeated his earlier question. “What are we gonna do?” 

“We’re gonna do what we do best. We’re gonna fight for our kids.” 

“Like we fought Bruce’s father in court?” 

“Exactly. We got this babe. It’s never easy, but it’s always worth it.” 

“I know. I’m sorry. This is just- a whole new level of terrifying.” 

“Don’t be sorry. It is. At least in Bruce’s case we knew the whole story- in Natasha’s we barely know who or what the enemy is. Just that he’s not taking our girl.” 

“I just want her to feel safe, Steve.” 

“She’ll get there.” 

“I know.” 

“Daddy, Papa- we’re ready for school!” Tony called from the living room. 

“You okay, babe?” Steve asked. 

He was. He meant it when he nodded his head. Steve smiled and kissed his forehead. “I’m proud of you, Buck. We got this.” 

They both walked back out into the living room. Tony was standing in front of the couch, holding onto Bruce with one hand and their backpacks with his other. Bruce looked alright, still a little anxious, but more at ease with his noise-cancelling headphones on. 

Clint was perched on the edge of the ottoman, tugging his shoes on. Natasha was curled into the corner of the couch like a cat, wrapped in Bruce’s weighted blanket. She looked calmer, but blank and a little spacey. 

Steve grabbed his keys from their hook and twirled them on his index finger.  _ Everyone have what they need for school? Lunchboxes? Coats? Gym shoes? _

The group nodded, save for Natasha. Clint knelt down in front of his sister and rested his hand on her shoulder. Bucky smiled when her gaze cleared a little and she actually focused on him. Her hands were shaking a little, but she hugged her brother and signed,  _ Have a good day.  _

_ I’ll save you a spot at lunch.  _ At that, Natasha paled. She shrugged. 

They’d have to work on some grounding this morning. And have a talk, before she felt safe enough to go to school. 

“Text me if you need anything, okay?” Steve kissed his cheek on his way out the door, shepherding the kids down the steps. 

“Love ya, punk.” And then, after pausing for a second, “You too, Natasha. I hope your day gets better. I’ll see you after school.” 

Natasha fixed her gaze in her lap until Bucky walked back over to the couch and sat down. 

“Могу я рассказать вам историю о том, как я провел в России?” 

Can I tell you a story about the time I spent in Russia? 

  
  
  
  
  



	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky tells Natasha about his time in Russia. She tells him about hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my dudes! Here it is- the chapter that answers so many questions. What happened to Natasha in Russia? I don't explain (yet) why she fled the country to get away from her father, but I answer a bunch of questions about her backstory in this update, so I think you guys will like it! I hope so. Thank you so much for your support of this fic. I never imagined when I first started posting this that I'd be getting 700+ reads a WEEK. I'm just glad you guys enjoy the words I cobble together. :) 
> 
> Trigger warnings- This chapter is INTENSE. TWs include (discussions of) rape, child abuse, drugs, PTSD, and trauma. Please stay safe while reading.

_ Did Steve ever tell you his Army nickname?  _ Bucky asked. They were sitting on the couch now- Natasha curled up in Bruce’s purple weighted blanket and Bucky with his feet up on the ottoman. 

Natasha’s eyes were still a little glazed (“dissociation,” he heard Therapist Steve say in his head), but she shook her head, thumb and forefinger rolling the weighted pellets inside each square of the blanket. 

_ Captain America.  _ Bucky showed Natasha Steve’s sign name next, which was basically the sign for SOLDIER, but made using the handshapes for Steve’s initials- S and R. 

The corner of Natasha’s mouth twitched in a smile, which Bucky took as an immediate positive. 

_ We both served in the 107th Infantry Division. I met little Stevie in bootcamp, and we ended up deployed together with the same unit.  _ Bucky took a deep breath and wrung his hands- metal wrapped around flesh, then flesh hugging metal. Telling this story never got easier, but he had a feeling it would help Natasha. 

_ Russia’s cold.  _

That got Natasha’s attention- she sat up a little straighter, her gaze cleared and focused. 

_ Steve was leading the 107th on a mission in cooperation with a few German Army units to take out a deep science base still in operation in the mountains, controlled by a terrorist organization called HYDRA. We were ambushed before we even made it in the front door and I...fell. We were high up and Steve couldn’t get to me in time.  _

_ I lost my arm in the fall. Me and about half the 107th were taken captive by HYDRA soldiers and transported to their headquarters in Russia. That’s where I got this.  _ Bucky rolled up the sleeve of his dress shirt to show Natasha the forearm of his metal arm.  _ We were held captive and...hurt...for a few months before Captain America and the rest of the 107th were able to rescue us. We lost a lot of good guys that day.  _

They were both silent for a few minutes. Natasha was quiet and still- not judging, just watching and processing. Bucky jumped when he felt her tiny, gentle fingers running along his metal ones, exploring. 

_ Weren’t you angry?  _ she asked.  _ They took a piece of you and...you can’t get that back. _

_ I was, in the beginning,  _ Bucky admitted.  _ But I’m still me, even without my left arm. My brain needed more healing than anything else. That was a lot harder than losing an arm.  _

_ Bad things happen in Russia.  _

_ Sometimes they do, yeah. But bad things happen everywhere. Russia’s not some special kind of bad, it’s just something you and I have in common.  _

Natasha shook her head, then brought her knees up to her chest, shifting the weight of the blanket so it folded up in her lap between her legs and her stomach. 

_ What’s wrong? Why are you shaking your head?  _ Bucky asked. She seemed like she was about to say something, and he wanted so badly for her to feel safe enough to do so. She wouldn’t start to heal until that happened. 

She clammed up nevertheless- eyes downcast, fingers picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. 

_ Here _ . Bucky pulled a basket out from underneath the coffee table, filled with a small sample of Bruce and Tony’s collection of fidget toys. He chose a green, putty-filled stress ball and held the bin out to Natasha, who after a brief moment of hesitation, chose a pink spinner ring that fit perfectly on her right thumb. 

They sat, still and silent, for so long that Bucky was almost sure Natasha wasn’t going to say anything. But his patience was rewarded after twenty minutes or so, when she unfolded her hands and brought them out from underneath the weighted blanket to sit in her lap. 

_ I guess you’re right. Bad things don’t just happen in Russia. I thought they’d stop happening once I left, but I couldn’t run away fast enough.  _

_ What were you running from?  _

_ Trouble.  _

_ You left with your mom and your biological sister, right?  _

_ Yes.  _

_ What happened once you got to the States?  _

_ The same things that happened in Russia, just with different people.  _

Bucky drummed his fingers on his thigh.  _ Were things better once you got away from your father?  _

Shrug.  _ For a little bit. And then they were exactly the same, except all the men spoke English instead of Russian.  _

_ Which men?  _

_ I can’t tell.  _

_ Why not?  _

_ Because.  _

_ Why not? They’re not here. They will never know. And my guess is, even if they were in this room, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about, because they’re dumb and don’t know sign language.  _

That got another little smile out of Natasha, which Bucky definitely saw despite her dipping her head and attempting to hide it behind her curls. 

_ My father is a bad man.  _

Bucky held his breath, worried that if he said anything, he’d scare Natasha back into her shell. 

_ As kids, me and Yelena were always curious about what he did for work. I wish we’d never have found out.  _

Natasha took a shaky breath and adjusted the weighted blanket in her lap.  _ I don’t know the words in English.  _

_ That’s okay,  _ Bucky signed. He stood up, grabbed a pen and paper out of the kitchen junk drawer, and handed them to Natasha. 

Natasha took the pad of paper and carefully wrote down a list of words, hand shaking as she fumbled through the cursive Cyrillic. When she’d finished, she held the list with both hands, tilted away so Bucky couldn’t read it. 

_ May I?  _

Natasha paused for a moment.  _ You say you care. You say I’m safe here. Do you really mean what you say?  _

Bucky’s heart crumpled a little. Of course he meant it. What made him sad was the fact that he had to convince her that yes- someone cared about her wellbeing. Yes, someone cared. 

_ I do mean it. I know you might not believe me, and that’s okay. We’ll work on that. When I first got back to the United States, every morning I’d have to ask Steve where I was and what day and week and month it was, and if he was absolutely sure enemy soldiers weren’t knocking on our door instead of the pizza delivery guy. I know that fear, and I will never judge you for it. I promise. But yes, I mean it when I say you are safe here.  _

Natasha didn’t say anything, just slid him the list and scooched farther away from him with her head in her hands. 

Наркотики. 

Drugs. 

Оружие. 

Guns. 

Торговать. 

Trafficking. 

детская проституция. 

Child prostitution. 

Child prostitution. 

Child prostitution. 

Bucky read that one three times over, wishing he wasn’t fluent in Russian and that he was simply mixing up a few consonants. 

He wasn’t. 

Child prostitution. 

Natasha was shaking- like, visibly trembling, on the other end of the sofa. 

“Наташа,” Bucky whispered. “Они заставляли вас делать то, что вы не хотели делать?” 

Did they force you to do things you didn’t want to do? 

Natasha looked up at him for the first time in several minutes, green eyes misty with tears. But they weren’t sad tears- they were  **angry** tears. She brought an A hand up to her cheek and brushed it next to her jaw several times. 

EVERYDAY. 

_ They forced us to be quiet, to never talk about the games they liked to play with us. Because we weren’t people, we were  _ **_girls_ ** _. We were money and warm bodies.  _

Bucky’s chest was unbearably tight and he wanted nothing more than to lock himself in the bathroom and let his panic attack take over but he couldn’t because his daughter was trusting him with a very scary part of her past and she needed him, goddammit! 

So he didn’t. He counted backwards by three’s and listed things in his head that he could see and feel and smell. 

Clock. 

Pillow. 

Coffee, left over from breakfast. 

_ I believe you.  _

_ What?  _ Natasha’s head snapped up and she brought her shaking hands up to her mouth, nervously fiddling with strands of hair wrapped around one finger. 

_ I believe you. Nothing was your fault and I’m sorry that happened to you. Can I make you a promise?  _ Pause. Nod.  _ I will  _ **_never_ ** _ let it happen again. Okay?  _

_ You can’t promise that bad things will never happen again.  _

_ No, I can’t. But I can promise you will never end up in the hands of the people who made them happen in the first place. I love you, and I’m not letting anyone lay a hand on you ever again, okay?  _

Natasha snatched the list back and stared at it so intensely Bucky was shocked it didn’t start smoking. Then she crumpled it up in her little hand and then the dam burst and she was sobbing uncontrollably and then the next second she was in Bucky’s lap, arms wrapped around him  **tight** like she was terrified to let go. 

“Can I put my arms around you, sweet girl? And hug you back?” Bucky asked softly, not wanting to trigger her further after the conversation they’d just had. 

Natasha nodded frantically, head buried in Bucky’s chest. She pressed closer to him and balled a hand in his shirt. 

“Okay, okay. Shh.” Bucky wrapped his arms around his daughter and held her close for the first time, her heart rate rabbiting against his own. “Я получил тебя сейчас.” 

I’ve got you now. 

Bucky reached for the weighted blanket, hoping it would ground Natasha a little and help her calm down. But as soon as he shifted his weight to reach, Natasha whined and shook her head. 

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere- just grabbing the blanket.” Bucky’s chest warmed a little- he was finally getting to hug his daughter, though he’d trade a lifetime of no hugs if he could erase every bad thing that had ever happened to her. 

What he wouldn’t give to have his Army-issue rifle back. 

Pointed right between Dreykov’s eyes. 

But this moment wasn’t about him being angry or sad or upset. This moment wasn’t about him at all. It was about the little girl in his arms, who just wanted the world to stop  **taking** from her. 

She just wanted to feel safe, and Bucky knew he’d do anything to give her that. 

“I’ve got you, моя девушка. I will not let them hurt you again. Not ever.” Bucky reached a hand up to gently cup the back of Natasha’s head, stroking her hair as he rocked them back and forth. “I’m proud of you, my girl. You are one of the bravest people I know, but it’s okay to not be brave all the time. It’s okay to ask for help sometimes.” 

Natasha picked her head off of Bucky’s chest, eyes red and puffy and signed,  _ Help me, please?  _

_ Of course.  _

Always. 


End file.
